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THE    PARK    STREET    CHURCH,     FROM    THE    COMMON 


THE  BOOK  OF 

BOSTON 

By 
ROBERT  SHACKLETON 

Author  of  "The  Book  of  New  York," 
"Unvisited  Places  of  Old  Europe,"  etc. 


B'  ']7.  ""''""•     .fcl 


Illustrated  with  Photographs 
and  with  drawings  by  R.  L.  Boyer 


THE    PENN    PUBLISHING 
COMPANY   PHILADELPHIA 

1920 


.•   • 


•  •    •  •     • 

•  •    •  •.•  • 


•   <•  •  • 


COPYRIGHT 
i  9  i  6       BY 

THE  PENN 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 


First  printing,  October,  1916 
Second  printing,  February,  191 7 

(lli'l  Off 


F73 

.5' 


The  Book  of  Boston 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  Taking  Stock  of  the  City  .......  1 

II  Boston  Common 5 

III  Boston  Preferred 20 

IV  On  the  Prim,  Decorous  Hill 35 

V  The  City  op  Holmes 49 

VI  A  House  Set  on  a  Hill    ......     62 

VII  A  Picturesque  Bostonian 73 

VIII  A  Woman's  City 84 

IX  The  Distinctive  Park  Street  Corner     .     .     99 

X  Two  Famous  Old  Buildings 109 

XI  To  the  Old  State  House 122 

XII  Faneuil  Hall  and  the  Waterside     .     .     .  133 

XIII  The  Streets  of  Boston 148 

XIV  In  the  Old  North  End 163 

XV  Down  Wapping  Street  and  Up  Bunker  Hill  177 

XVI  The  Back  Bay  and  the  Students'  Quarter  .  188 

XVII    Heights  Reached  and  Kept 208 

XVIII  "College  Red  and  Common  Green* '   .     .     .  223 

XIX  An  Adventure  est  Pure  Romance  ....  239 

XX  A  Town  That  Washington  Wanted  to  See  .  255 

XXI  The  Famous  Old  Seaport  of  Salem   .     .     .  269 

XXII  The  Most  Important  Road  est  America     .     .  285 

XXIII  Plymouth  and  Provincetown 300 

XXIV  "The  Night  Shall  Be  Filled  with  Music' '  .  319 
Index t.     ....  327 


M94341 


ILLUSTBATIONS 

The  Park  Street  Church,  from  the  Common  .     Frontispiece 
Doorway  of  the  old  house  of  the  Harvard  Presidents, 
Cambridge Title  Page  Decoration 

PAGE 

The  Shaw  Memorial (heading)  1 

Fountain  on  the  Common (initial)  1 

Boston  from  the  Charles (tail  piece)  4 

The  Long  Path (initial)  5 

St.  Paul's,  facing  the  Common      .     .     .     (tail  piece)  19 

A  doorway  on  Beacon  Hill (initial)  20 

Beautiful  Mount  Vernon  Street  .     .     .     (facing)  22 

A  Beacon  Street  mantel  of  1818    .     .     .     (tail  piece)  34 

The  high-shouldered  end  of  Cedar  Street      (initial)  35 

Looking  down  old  Pinckney  Street  .     .     (facing)'  44 

Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich's  doorway      .     .     (tail  piece)  48 

Quaint  steps  at  end  of  Bosworth  Street  .  (initial)1  49 
The    doorway    of    Prescott's    home    on    Beacon    Hill 

(facing)  52 

The  Sunny  Street  that  holds  the  Sifted  Few  (tail  piece)  61 

Iron  gateway  at  the  State  House   .     .     .     (initial)  62 

The  Bostonian  Hub  of  the  Universe  .     .     (facing)  66 

Looking  across  the  Public  Garden  .     .     .     (tail  piece)  72 

The  Mall,  across  from  Hancock's  house  .     (initial)  73 

John  Hancock's  sofa (tail  piece)  83 

Entrance  to  the  Women's  City  Club  .  .  (initial)  84 
A    spiral    stairway,    by    Bulfinch,    on    Beacon    Hill 

.:     .      .     >     A     w     .     .     .     .     .     .     (facing)  92 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  from  the  Fenway 

(tail  piece)     98 

The  gate  of  the  Granary  Burying-Ground  (initial)          99 

Tremont  Street  along  the  Common     .     .  (tail  piece)  108 

Old  King's  Chapel (initial)        109 

Statue  of  Franklin  at  the  City  Hall    .     .  (tail  piece)  121 

A  narrow  byway (initial)         122 

The  Old  State  House (tail  piece)  132 

Old  India  Wharf (initial)        133 

Faneuil  Hall  and  Quincy  Market      .     .  (facing)        134 

T  Wharf (tail  piece)  147 

Bridge  on  the  Fenway (initial)        148 

On  Commonwealth  Avenue     ....  (tail  piece)  162 

Old  North  Church (initial)        163 

Interior  of  the  Paul  Revere  house      .     .  (tail  piece)  176 

Bunker  Hill  Monument (initial)        177 

"Old  Ironsides' ' (facing)        178 

Where  the  British  landed :  the  Navy  Yard,  Charlestown 

(tail  piece)  187 

The  Boston  Library (initial)         188 

A  Venetian  palace  in  the  Fenlands  .     .  (facing)        202 

Cloistered  courtyard  of  Boston  Library  .  (tail  piece)  207 

Statue  of  Washington  in  Public  Garden  .  (initial)        208 

Knox's  cannon,  on  Cambridge  Common  .  (tail  piece)  222 

The  Washington  Elm,  Cambridge  .     .     .  (initial)        223 

The  Main  Gateway  of  Harvard     .     .     .  (facing)        230 

At  the  Arnold  Arboretum (tail  piece)  238 

Birthplace  of  two  Presidents,  Quincy  .     .  (initial)        239 

The  Fairbanks  house,  Dedham;  probably  the  oldest  in 

New  England (facing)        242 

Church  at  Quincy     .......  (tail  piece)  254 

Stairway  in  the  Lee  mansion,  Marblehead  (initial)        255 


ILLUSTEATIONS 

PAGE 

The  harbor  of  Marblehead       ....     (facing)  264 

The  old  Cradock  house  on  the  Mystic     .     (tail  piece)  268 

A  Salem  doorway (initial)  269 

Romantic  Chestnut  Street,  in  Salem  .     .     (facing)  276 

Hawthorne's  birthplace,  Salem     .     .      .     (tail  piece)  284 

The  Old  Manse,  Concord (initial)  285 

''Here  Once  the  Embattled  Farmers  Stood":  Concord 

(facing)  294 

Emerson's  library    .......     (tail  piece)  299 

The  Alden  house,  at  Duxbury  ....     (initial)  300 

Plymouth,  from  the  Graveyard  on  the  Hill  (facing)  306 

Sand  dunes  of  Provincetown  ....     (tail  piece)  318 

Along  Charlesbank (initial)  319 

Old  Louisburg  Square (facing)  322 

A  Club  hallway  ....     v,    .     >     .     (tail  piece)  325 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 


CHAPTEE  I 


TAKING  STOCK  OF  THE  CITY 

SHALL  write  of  Boston.  I  shall  write 
of  the  Boston  of  to-day;  of  what  Bos- 
ton has  retained,  and  what  it  has  be- 
come and  what  it  has  builded;  and  I 
shall  write,  to  use  the  quaint  old 
Shakespearean  phrase,  of  the  memo- 
rials and  the  works  of  art  that  do 
adorn  the  city.  I  shall  write  of  the 
Boston  to  which  thousands  of  Ameri- 
cans annually  pilgrimage.  And  if,  in  writing  of  the 
Boston  of  to-day,  there  is  mention  of  the  past,  it  will 
be  because  in  certain  aspects,  in  certain  phases, 
the  past  and  the  present  are  inextricably  blended. 
Boston  is  dear  to  the  hearts  of  Americans. 

1 


; ;*  ;  :< s ;  tp:e  book  of  boston 

A  city  of  interest,  this :  a  city  with  much  of  charm, 
with  much  of  beauty,  with  much  of  dignity.  A  city 
of  idols  as  well  as  of  ideals,  and  with  some  of  the 
idols  clay.  For,  indeed,  it  is  a  very  human  city,  with 
pleasantly  piquant  peculiarities.  On  the  whole,  in 
its  development,  a  comfortable  city.  A  city  of  tradi- 
tions that  are  fine  and  traditions  that  are  not  so  fine. 
A  city  of  beliefs  and  at  the  same  time  of  prejudices. 
A  city  rich  in  associations,  rich  in  its  memories  of 
great  men  and  great  deeds,  rich  in  its  possession  of 
places  connected  with  those  men  and  deeds.  No  other 
American  city  so  richly  and  delightfully  summons  up 
remembrance  of  things  past. 

I  shall  write  of  the  people  as  well  as  of  their  city, 
and  of  their  character  and  peculiarities  and  ways. 
Boston,  with  its  prosperous  present  and  its  fine,  free 
relish  of  a  history  that  is  like  romance,  is  a  likable 
city,  a  pleasing  city,  a  city  to  win  the  heart. 

And  it  still  has  the  aspect  of  an  American  city. 
Hosts  of  foreigners  have  come  in,  but  something  in 
the  spirit  of  the  place  tends  finely  to  assimilation. 
Some  portions  of  the  city  are  altogether  foreign,  but 
on  the  whole  the  American  atmosphere  has  persisted. 
There  is  constantly  the  impression  that  Americans 
are  still  the  dominant  and  permeative  force,  and  one 
comes  to  realize  that  by  their  influence,  and  by  a 
splendid  system  of  day  schools  and  night  schools,  they 
are  steadily  making  Americans  of  foreigners  and  even 
more  so  of  the  children  of  foreigners.  The  early 
Bostonians,  by  means  of  the  forces  of  a  thoughtful 
civilization,  and  constantly  by  earnest  work  and  pro- 

2  ' 


TAKING  STOCK  OF  THE  CITY 

found  sacrifices,  expended  their  energies  in  fitting 
their  country  for  the  citizens  of  the  future.  The 
Bostonians  of  to-day  find  it  necessary  to  fit  those 
citizens  for  our  country! 

Boston  is  a  mature  city,  a  mellow  city,  a  city  of  ex- 
perience and  experiences,  a  city  of  amenities,  a  city 
of  age.  Never  was  there  a  greater  fallacy  than  the 
still-continuing  one  that  ours  is  a  new  country!  It 
is  generations  since  this  was  true.  When  one  re- 
members that  the  Pilgrims  came  three  centuries  ago, 
and  that  the  Bostonian  settlers  closely  followed  them, 
it  is  strange  that  there  should  still  be  an  impression 
that  this  means  youth.  Clearly,  undoubtedly,  the  city 
of  Boston  is  old.  If  one  should  say  that  it  is  not  old 
because  it  is  younger  than  London,  then  neither  is 
London  old  because  it  is  younger  than  Eome.  Age  is 
necessarily  a  relative  term,  and  three  centuries  of 
vivid,  earnest,  eager,  glowing  life  give  age  to  Boston. 

Yet  it  is  not  merely  because  of  its  age  that  Boston 
holds  one.  A  city,  like  a  building  or  like  a  person, 
must  have  much  more  than  mere  age  to  arouse  in- 
terest. A  city  must  have  charm  or  beauty  or  grace, 
or  brave  associations  with  a  long-past  time ;  and  Bos- 
ton, with  the  soft  twilight  into  which  its  more  distant 
history  vaguely  merges  and  with  its  possessions  of 
beauty  and  delight  fulness  and  dignity,  assuredly  pos- 
sesses these  requisites.  History  and  buildings,  great 
achievements,  picturesque  events — Boston  may  point 
to  them  all. 

But  I  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  everything,  or  even 
every  important  thing,  in  Boston's  present  or  Bos- 

3 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ton's  past.  He  who  writes  of  Boston  must,  from 
necessities  of  time  and  space,  leave  much  untold  and 
undescribed ;  but  in  selecting  what  seem  the  essential 
and  most  notable  features  one  ought,  at  least,  to  pre- 
sent the  piquant  city  in  a  fair  and  rounded  way. 

And  Boston  ought  not  to  be  considered  in  a  nar- 
row geographical  sense.  To  write  properly  of  Bos- 
ton is  to  write  also  of  the  neighboring  towns  that 
have  come  to  be  associated  with  her  in  common  ac- 
ceptance and  common  thought ;  the  places  over  which 
the  mantle  of  Boston  has  been  flung  and  which  stand 
hand  in  hand  with  her  in  the  light  of  tradition  and 
history. 


& 

n 


-*     r 


CHAPTER  II 


BOSTON   COMMON 


OSTON  COMMON  has  given  to 
Boston  individuality.  Standing 
practically  untouched  and  un- 
broken, in  the  very  heart  of  the 
city,  it  represents  the  permanence 
of  ideals.  And  it  has  always  rep- 
resented liberty,  breadth,  unique- 
ness of  standpoint.  One  gathers 
the  impression  that  the  people  of 
Boston  will  retain  their  liberty  so 
long  as  they  retain  their  Common,  and  will  sink  into 
commonplaceness  only  if  they  give  up  their  Com- 
mon.   It  is,  in  a  double  sense,  a  Common  heritage. 

Utilitarianism  would  long  ago  have  taken  this  great 
central  space  to  make  way  for  the  natural  develop- 
ment of  business ;  this  great  opening,  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  city  growth,  would  long  ago  have  been  cut 
by  streets  and  covered  with  buildings.  But  Boston 
has  held  loyally  to  her  ideals :  she  has  held  the  Com- 
mon ;  from  the  first,  she  seems  to  have  had  a  subcon- 
scious sense  of  its  indispensability  to  her. 

One  might  begin,  in  writing  of  the  Common,  with 
naming  the  streets  that  bound  it,  and  setting  down  the 

5 


THE  BOOK  OF.  BOSTON 

precise  area — which,  by  the  way,  is  not  far  from  fifty 
acres — but  the  vital  fact  about  it  is  that  for  almost 
three  hundred  years,  almost  from  the  beginning  of 
Boston,  the  Common  has  been  a  common  in  fact  as 
well  as  in  name,  held  for  public  use  throughout  these 
centuries.  No  street  has  ever  been  put  through  it; 
no  street  car  line  has  been  allowed  to  cross.  To  some 
extent  the  subway  has  been  permitted  to  burrow  be- 
neath, but  that  has  itself  been  for  public  use  without 
affecting  the  surface.  The  long-ago  law  of  1640  de- 
clared that l '  There  shall  be  no  land  granted  either  for 
houseplott  or  garden,  out  of  ye  open  ground  or  com- 
mon field,' '  and  this  inhibition,  broadly  interpreted 
for  the  Common  preservation,  has  held  through  the 
centuries.  In  1646 — how  long,  long  ago ! — a  law  was 
passed,  further  to  strengthen  the  matter,  declaring 
that  the  Common  should  forever  be  held  unbroken 
until  a  vote  of  the  majority  of  the  people  should  per- 
mit it  to  be  sliced  or  cut ;  and  this  very  year  in  which 
I  write,  the  people,  on  account  of  this  ancient  law, 
voted  on  a  proposition  to  reduce  the  Common  in 
order  to  widen  bordering  streets,  and  by  a  big  ma- 
jority voted  it  down. 

The  ordinary  American  impression  of  a  common  is 
of  a  shadeless  and  cheerless  expanse,  a  flat,  bare 
space.  But  Boston  Common  is  crowded  thick  with 
old  trees,  it  is  light  and  cheerful  and  alive  with  hap- 
piness ;  instead  of  being  flat  it  is  delightfully  diversi- 
fied, and  instead  of  being  bare  it  has,  over  all  of  its 
surface  excepting  the  playground  spaces,  an  excel- 
lent covering  of  grass — and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact 

6 


BOSTON  COMMON 

that  there  are  no  keep-off-the-grass  prohibitions. 
The  Common  is  a  space  to  be  freely  used,  but  the  peo- 
ple love  it  and  do  not  ruin  it  with  use. 

Those  whom  one  ordinarily  meets  on  the  Common 
are  of  the  busy,  earnest,  clean-cut  types.  Many  of 
them,  one  sees  at  a  glance,  have  grandmothers.  All 
are  well-dressed,  alert,  genially  happy — and  the  fancy 
persistently  comes  that  the  very  air  of  the  Common 
diffuses  a  comfortable  happiness. 

Among  the  pleasantest  of  the  many  pleasant  asso- 
ciations with  the  Common  is  that  of  Ealph  Waldo 
Emerson  and  of  how,  as  a  small  boy,  he  used  to  tend 
his  mother's  cow  here!  There  is  a  fine  and  simple 
breeziness  in  the  very  thought  of  it.  .What  a  picture 
— the  serious,  solemn  little  boy  so  solemnly  and  seri- 
ously doing  his  part  to  aid  his  widowed  mother  in  the 
time  of  her  straitened  fortunes!  I  think  it  much 
more  than  a  mere  fancy  that  the  influences  of  that 
time  had  much  to  do  with  making  Emerson  a  patient 
and  practical  and  kindly  philosopher  instead  of 
merely  a  cold  and  theoretical  one.  And  I  associate 
with  those  early  days  a  tale  of  his  later  years,  a  tale 
of  his  coming  somewhere  upon  a  young  man  who  was 
vainly  struggling  to  get  a  mild  but  exasperating  calf 
through  a  gate :  pushing  would  not  do,  pulling  would 
not  do,  and,  "Oh,  don't  beat  her!"  said  a  gentle 
voice,  and  the  by-that-time  famous  Emerson  tucked  a 
finger  into  the  corner  of  the  calf's  mouth  and  the  lit- 
tle beast  trotted  quietly  along,  sucking  hard !  I  think 
that  Emerson,  personally  lovable  man  that  he  was, 
owed  to  his  experience  with  the  cow  on  the  Common 

7 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  possession  of  so  great  a  share  of  the  milk  of  hu- 
man kindness,  and  to  his  living  for  a  time  at  the  very 
edge  of  the  Common  much  of  his  open  outlook  on 
life.  And  there  comes  to  mind  a  letter  in  which  some 
one  mentioned  his  writing,  as  a  boy,  a  scholarly  com- 
position on  the  stars,  because  of  thoughts  that  came 
to  him  from  looking  up  at  the  stars  from  the  Com- 
mon. That  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  represents  Bos- 
ton Common.  Perhaps  "  Hitch  your  wagon  to  a 
star ! ' '  came  to  Emerson  from  the  inspiration  of  those 
early  days. 

Cows  were  freely  pastured  on  the  Common  until 
about  1830 ;  and  one  thinks  of  the  delightful  story  of 
Hancock,  he  of  the  mighty  signature,  who,  having  on 
hand  a  banquet  for  the  officers  of  some  French  war- 
ships, at  a  time  when  the  friendship  of  the  French 
meant  much  to  us,  and  learning  that  his  own  cows 
had  not  given  milk  enough,  promptly  sent  out  his 
servants  to  milk  every  cow  on  the  Common  regardless 
of  ownership!  And  the  very  owners  of  the  cows 
liked  him  the  better  for  it.  And  the  fact  that  Han- 
cock's splendid  mansion  looked  out  over  the  Common 
had,  doubtless,  much  to  do  with  giving  him  the  cheer- 
fully likable  qualities  that  he  possessed,  in  spite  of 
qualities  not  so  likable.  For  this  is  such  a  human 
Common!  You  cannot  help  feeling  it  every  time 
you  cross  it  or  walk  beside  it  or  look  out  over  it.  It 
is  a  place  where  people  are  natural,  even  though  you 
no  longer  see  cows  there.  And  there  is  a  building 
on  fashionable  Mount  Vernon  Street,  close  by,  a  low 
one-story  studio  building,  which  not  only,  though  the 

8 


BOSTON  COMMON 

inhibition  is  ancient  indeed,  is  kept  down  to  one-story 
height  as  an  incorporeal  hereditament  of  the  houses 
opposite,  which  did  not  wish  their  view  interfered 
with,  but  which  also  possesses,  opening  upon  the 
street,  a  broad  door  which  —  so  you  are  told,  and  you 
have  no  desire  to  risk  the  chances  of  disproval 
by  unearthing  old  documents — must  forever  remain  a 
broad  door  so  as  to  let  out  the  cows  for  the  Common ! 

The  Common  is  not  all  a  level,  nor  is  it  all  a  hill, 
for  it  is  freely  diversified  with  levels  and  slopes.  It 
is  a  pleasantly  rolling  acreage  a^d  possesses  even  a 
big  pond.  And  there  are  a  great  many  trees,  in  spite 
of  the  difficulties  that  trees  face  in  their  fight  for  ex- 
istence against  city  air  and  smoke,  and  in  spite  of 
the  ravages  of  the  gypsy  moth,  and  in  spite  of  serious 
lopping.  The  trees  still  cast  a  royal  shade  and  give 
a  fine,  sweet  air  to  it  all. 

It  is  pleasant,  too,  to  notice  the  system  adopted 
here  many  years  ago,  and  now  in  use  in  some  other 
cities  also,  of  marking  carefully  the  different  trees 
with  both  their  popular  and  botanic  names.  For  my 
own  part,  I  remember  that  it  was  as  a  youth,  on  Boston 
Common,  that  I  first  learned  to  differentiate  the  Eng- 
lish elm  from  the  American  and  the  linden  from  the 
English  elm. 

One  may  get  somewhat  of  real  beauty  on  the  Com- 
mon too,  as,  the  glorious  yellow  and  green  effect  of 
the  great  gold  dome  of  the  State  House  seen  through 
and  beyond  the  trees. 

The  paths,  whether  of  asphalt  or  earth,  are  rather 
shabby,  and  the  Common  has  nothing  of  the  aspect 

9 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

of  gardens  or  of  trimmed  lawns.  There  is  an  excel- 
lent Public  Garden  just  beyond  the  Common,  if  that  is 
what  one  is  looking  for. 

I  know  of  no  other  open  space  in  America  so  geni- 
ally and  generally  used.  And  no  one,  except  once  in 
a  while  for  some  special  event  or  reason,  ever  goes 
to  the  Common — no  one  needs  to — for  it  is  simply 
right  here  at  the  center  of  things,  and  doesn't  need 
going  to !  It  is  crossed  and  passed  and  looked  at  in 
the  daily  routine  of  life. 

In  its  complete  exclusion  of  vehicles,  the  Common 
is  the  pedestrian's  paradise;  and  never  were  there 
paths  that  lead  on  such  unexpected  tangents.  Never 
were  there  paths  which  so  puzzlingly  start  you  in 
apparent  good  faith  for  one  destination  only  to  make 
you  find  yourself  most  surprisingly  headed  in  an- 
other. Yet  these  perplexing  paths  are  all  straight! 
The  uneven  and  vari-angled  sides  which  make  the 
Common  neither  round  nor  oblong  nor  square  nor 
anything  at  all,  are  responsible  for  leading  even  the 
oldest  citizen  away  from  his  objective  if  he  for  a 
moment  forgets  what  a  lifetime  of  familiarity  with 
these  paths  has  taught  him. 

Many  of  the  Common  walks,  as  winter  approaches, 
are  made  to  look  amusingly  like  the  sidewalks  of 
some  village,  for  interminable  lengths  of  planking, 
full  of  slivers  and  holes,  are  dragged  from  their  sum- 
mer's hiding  places  and  laid  down  here,  on  crosspieces 
that  raise  them  a  few  inches  above  the  level  of  the 
walks. 

A  prettily  shaded  path  is  the  one  Jmown  as  the 

10 


BOSTON  COMMON 

Long  Path,  leading  far  on  under  tall  and  overarching 
trees  from  the  steps  opposite  Joy  Street  to  the  junc- 
tion of  Boylston  and  Tremont,  and  this  is  the  path 
followed  by  the  Autocrat  and  the  Schoolmistress  in 
the  charming  love  episode  that  was  long  ago  so 
charmingly  told.  One  may  almost  think  that  the  hu- 
man touch  of  this  pretty  romance,  with  its  simple 
glow  of  love  and  life,  is  the  most  delightful  bit  of 
humanity  about  the  Common,  and  the  fact  that  it 
was  a  love  affair  of  fiction  does  not  make  the  story 
the  least  particle  unreal,  for  every  one  remembers  it 
as  if  it  was  lovemaking  of  the  real  and  actual  kind. 

Although  the  Common  has  been  held  immune  from 
homes  or  streets  for  these  three  centuries,  a  part  of 
it  was  long  ago  given  over  to  a  graveyard.  It  is  a 
large  graveyard,  too,  and,  although  it  is  directly 
across  from  thronged  sidewalks  and  sparkling  shops 
and  theaters,  it  is  just  as  attractively  gloomy  in  ap- 
pearance as  a  good  old-fashioned  graveyard  ought  to 
be !  Central  as  it  is,  and  befitting  its  name  of  Central 
Burying-Ground,  it  has  all  the  interest  of  aloofness. 
It  is  practically  hidden,  it  is  almost  forgotten  and 
overlooked;  and  this  effect  is  really  remarkable. 

One  of  the  many  who  are  buried  here  was  the  in- 
ventor of  a  soup  that  promises  to  keep  his  name  in 
perpetual  remembrance  —  of  such  varied  possibilities 
does  Fame  make  use  to  hold  men's  names  alive! 
Many  years  ago  a  certain  Julien  was  a  cook  and  a 
caterer  in  Boston,  an  excellent  cook  and  caterer  whose 
finest  achieved  ambition  was  the  making  of  a  certain 
soup  which  so  hugely  tickled  the  palates  of  the  elect 

11 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

of  gardens  or  of  trimmed  lawns.  There  is  an  excel- 
lent Public  Garden  just  beyond  the  Common,  if  that  is 
what  one  is  looking  for. 

I  know  of  no  other  open  space  in  America  so  geni- 
ally and  generally  used.  And  no  one,  except  once  in 
a  while  for  some  special  event  or  reason,  ever  goes 
to  the  Common — no  one  needs  to — for  it  is  simply 
right  here  at  the  center  of  things,  and  doesn't  need 
going  to !  It  is  crossed  and  passed  and  looked  at  in 
the  daily  routine  of  life. 

In  its  complete  exclusion  of  vehicles,  the  Common 
is  the  pedestrian's  paradise;  and  never  were  there 
paths  that  lead  on  such  unexpected  tangents.  Never 
were  there  paths  which  so  puzzlingly  start  you  in 
apparent  good  faith  for  one  destination  only  to  make 
you  find  yourself  most  surprisingly  headed  in  an- 
other. Yet  these  perplexing  paths  are  all  straight! 
The  uneven  and  vari-angled  sides  which  make  the 
Common  neither  round  nor  oblong  nor  square  nor 
anything  at  all,  are  responsible  for  leading  even  the 
oldest  citizen  away  from  his  objective  if  he  for  a 
moment  forgets  what  a  lifetime  of  familiarity  with 
these  paths  has  taught  him. 

Many  of  the  Common  walks,  as  winter  approaches, 
are  made  to  look  amusingly  like  the  sidewalks  of 
some  village,  for  interminable  lengths  of  planking, 
full  of  slivers  and  holes,  are  dragged  from  their  sum- 
mer's hiding  places  and  laid  down  here,  on  crosspieces 
that  raise  them  a  few  inches  above  the  level  of  the 
walks. 

A  prettily  shaded  path  is  the  one  Jmown  as  the 

10 


BOSTON  COMMON 

Long  Path,  leading  far  on  under  tall  and  overarching 
trees  from  the  steps  opposite  Joy  Street  to  the  junc- 
tion of  Boylston  and  Tremont,  and  this  is  the  path 
followed  by  the  Autocrat  and  the  Schoolmistress  in 
the  charming  love  episode  that  was  long  ago  so 
charmingly  told.  One  may  almost  think  that  the  hu- 
man touch  of  this  pretty  romance,  with  its  simple 
glow  of  love  and  life,  is  the  most  delightful  bit  of 
humanity  about  the  Common,  and  the  fact  that  it 
was  a  love  affair  of  fiction  does  not  make  the  story 
the  least  particle  unreal,  for  every  one  remembers  it 
as  if  it  was  lovemaking  of  the  real  and  actual  kind. 

Although  the  Common  has  been  held  immune  from 
homes  or  streets  for  these  three  centuries,  a  part  of 
it  was  long  ago  given  over  to  a  graveyard.  It  is  a 
large  graveyard,  too,  and,  although  it  is  directly 
across  from  thronged  sidewalks  and  sparkling  shops 
and  theaters,  it  is  just  as  attractively  gloomy  in  ap- 
pearance as  a  good  old-fashioned  graveyard  ought  to 
be !  Central  as  it  is,  and  befitting  its  name  of  Central 
Burying-Ground,  it  has  all  the  interest  of  aloofness. 
It  is  practically  hidden,  it  is  almost  forgotten  and 
overlooked;  and  this  effect  is  really  remarkable. 

One  of  the  many  who  are  buried  here  was  the  in- 
ventor of  a  soup  that  promises  to  keep  his  name  in 
perpetual  remembrance  —  of  such  varied  possibilities 
does  Fame  make  use  to  hold  men's  names  alive! 
Many  years  ago  a  certain  Julien  was  a  cook  and  a 
caterer  in  Boston,  an  excellent  cook  and  caterer  whose 
finest  achieved  ambition  was  the  making  of  a  certain 
soup  which  so  hugely  tickled  the  palates  of  the  elect 

11 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

that  by  general  consent  the  name  of  Julien  was  lov- 
ingly attached  to  it.  Well,  he  deserves  his  fame,  as 
does  any  man  who  adds  to  the  happiness  and  health 
of  humanity.    And  here  his  body  lies. 

And  in  this  lonely  and  melancholy  cemetery,  with 
the  brilliant  shops  and  theaters  so  incongruously 
looking  out  over  it,  there  is  buried  the  artist  admit- 
tedly honored  as  the  greatest  of  early  American  por- 
trait painters;  perhaps  the  greatest,  even  including 
the  best  of  modern  days;  and  of  course  I  refer  to 
Gilbert  Stuart.  This  son  of  a  snuff  grinder  was  hon- 
ored abroad  as  well  as  at  home,  and  gave  up  a  tri- 
umphant career  in  England,  in  the  course  of  which 
he  painted  King  George  the  Third  and  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  who  was  to  become  George  the  Fourth,  in 
order  to  satisfy  his  intense  desire  to  return  to  Amer- 
ica to  paint  a  greater  George  than  either. 

It  is  fitting  that  he  should  be  buried  here  in  New 
England's  greatest  city,  for  he  was  New  England 
born,  and  he  lived  in  Boston  throughout  the  last 
twenty  years  or  so  of  his  life,  and  Boston  is  the  proud 
possessor  of  his  best  and  finest  Washington,  one  of 
the  only  two  that  he  painted  direct  from  his  subject 
(the  many  others  being  copies  or  adaptations  by  him- 
self or  by  other  artists),  and  with  this  George  Wash- 
ington is  also  Stuart's  altogether  charming  portrait 
of  Martha  Washington,  the  two  being  painted  at  the 
same  time.  Yet  only  the  other  day  I  noticed,  in  Bos- 
ton's best  morning  newspaper,  a  brief  reference  to 
Gilbert  Stuart  which  twice  spelled  his  name  with  a 
"w"!    0  Temporal 

12 


BOSTON  COMMON 

Some  years  after  Stuart's  death,  it  was  arranged 
by  some  wealthy  folk  of  Rhode  Island  to  take  his 
body  back  to  his  native  State:  for  he  was  born  at 
Narragansett,  six  miles  from  Pottawoone  and  four 
from  Ponanicut,  as  he  once  explained  to  some  Eng- 
lishmen who  wondered  where  a  man  could  possibly 
be  born  who  spoke  English,  but  said  that  he  was  not 
a  native  of  England  or  Scotland  or  Ireland  or  Wales ; 
but  after  the  preparations  had  been  made  it  was 
learned  that  not  only  was  the  grave  of  Stuart  un- 
marked but  that  it  was  unknown;  Boston  had  care- 
lessly mislaid  the  body  of  this  great  American;  so 
the  best  that  could  be  done  was  to  put  a  tablet  on  the 
outside  of  the  cemetery  fence. 

Not  far  from  the  burying  ground  is  a  monument  in 
honor  of  the  men  who  were  killed  in  what  has  always 
been  known  as  the  Boston  Massacre.  And  the  list  of 
killed  is  headed  by  the  name  of  Crispus  Attucks,  the 
negro;  not  that  he  was  more  of  a  martyr  than  the 
others,  but  that  this  was  a  chance  to  set  a  negro's 
name  first  as  a  sort  of  defiance,  on  the  part  of  this 
abolitionist  city  of  Boston,  to  any  who  might  deem 
negroes  inferior.  And  by  far  the  noblest  monument 
in  Boston,  a  monument  positively  thrilling  as  well  as 
beautiful,  a  monument  which,  though  standing  unob- 
trusively, just  recessed  from  the  sidewalk,  is  aston- 
ishingly effective  in  its  splendid  setting  between  the 
two  great  trees  that  shade  it,  is  a  sculpture  by  St. 
Gaudens,  which  vividly  presents,  in  deep  relief,  not 
only  the  figure  of  the  gallant  Colonel  Shaw  but  fig- 
ures of  the  negroes  who  bravely  followed  him  to  a 

13 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

brave  death.  It  is  a  memorial  to  the  spirit,  even 
more  than  it  is  a  monument  to  men.  This  memorial 
— the  most  successfully  placed  monument  in  Amer- 
ica— stands  at  the  highest  point  of  the  Common,  close 
to  the  spot  where  the  War  Governor  of  Massachusetts 
stood  to  see  Shaw  and  his  regiment  march  by;  and 
fittingly,  here,  these  soldiers  in  bronze  will  forever 
go  marching  on. 

There  is  a  great  deal  in  a  city's  devotion  to  ideals; 
but  only  a  few  evenings  ago,  in  a  big  Boston  theater 
that  was  packed  to  capacity,  there  were  "movie" 
pictures  of  the  sad  reconstruction  days,  pictures  so 
utterly  unfair  in  character  as  to  be  deplored  even  by 
the  more  earnest  sympathizers  with  the  South;  and 
yet,  that  crowded  house  applauded  tempestuously — 
the  only  applause  of  the  evening — the  pictures  of 
masked  Ku  Klux  riding  down  and  killing  negroes. 
But  I  suppose  one  ought  not  to  forget  that  Boston 
must  hold  descendants  of  those  who  tried  to  mob  Gar- 
rison, as  well  as  descendants  of  those  who  stood  for 
human  liberty. 

Another  of  the  Common  monuments  stands  on  an 
isolated  little  hillock,  and  is  to  the  memory  of  the 
soldiers  and  sailors  who  died  in  the  Rebellion.  It  is 
not  much  as  a  work  of  art;  in  fact,  it  is  somewhat 
worse,  because  more  pretentious,  than  a  host  of  medi- 
ocre military  memorials  set  up  throughout  the  coun- 
try; but  the  situation  is  fine,  and  the  inscription  is 
fine,  narrating  as  it  does  that  the  city  has  built  the 
monument  with  the  intent  that  it  shall  speak  to  future 
generations;  and  so,  one  sees  that  it  is  an  excellent 

14 


BOSTON  COMMON 

thing  to  stand  here,  elm-shaded  on  its  eminence. 
More  and  more  one  feels  that  across  this  Common 
comes  blowing  the  warm  breath  of  a  history  that  is 
alive. 

From  the  very  earliest  days  the  Common  was  a 
training  ground  for  soldiers,  and  this  use  has  not 
been  entirely  forgotten.  The  Bostonians  are  in- 
clined to  resent  the  fact  that  their  Common  was  used 
by  the  British  in  the  Eevolutionary  times  as  a  train- 
ing ground  and  mustering  place  for  the  soldiers  who 
went  to  Bunker  Hill,  and  before  that  for  the  ones 
who  marched  to  Lexington;  it  was  taking  quite  a 
liberty,  they  still  feel;  but  they  find  consolation  in 
certain  facts  of  history  in  regard  to  what  happened 
to  those  men. 

It  is  still  remembered,  too,  that  a  tall  young  Amer- 
ican, standing  by,  attracted  the  awed  attention  of  the 
British  soldiers  here,  for  he  was  over  seven  feet  high ; 
and  he  remarked  to  them,  carelessly,  that  when  they 
should  get  up  into  the  interior  of  the  country  they 
would  learn  what  Americans  really  were,  for  out 
there  they  looked  on  him,  with  his  height  of  only 
seven  feet,  as  a  mere  baby. 

And  once,  between  the  days  of  Lexington  and 
Bunker  Hill,  an  American  stood  by  and  laughed 
amusedly  as  a  company  of  British  were  practising 
target  shooting,  which  so  annoyed  their  captain  that 
he  demanded  an  explanation,  whereupon  the  Amer- 
ican said  it  amused  him  to  see  such  bad  shooting. 
"Can  you  do  any  better f"  said  the  officer  angrily. 
"Give  me  a  gun,"  was  the  laconic  reply.    And  with 

15 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

that  the  American  proceeded  to  give  an  astonishing 
exhibition  of  center-spot  hitting — and  the  British 
were  to  learn,  to  their  cost,  over  on  the  hill  in  Charles- 
town,  that  Americans  could  hit  live  targets  just  as 
readily  as  they  could  hit  any  other  kind.  (That  story 
of  target  hitting  is  curiously  like  Scott's  story  of 
Eobin  Hood  hitting  the  target  at  the  angry  behest  of 
King  John !  If  Scott  had  been  an  American  he  would 
have  found  a  wealth  of  material  in  American  annals.) 

The  broad  elm-arched  mall  along  the  Beacon  Street 
side  of  the  Common  is  an  odd  memento  of  our  second 
war  with  England ;  for  money  was  raised  by  subscrip- 
tion in  1814  to  defend  the  city  against  an  expected  at- 
tack, and  as  the  attack  was  not  made  and  peace  was, 
the  money  was  spent  in  constructing  this  mall. 

Very  early,  the  Common  was  used  as  a  place  of 
execution,  and  in  particular  it  was  where  Quakers 
and  witches  were  unanswerably  silenced:  but  in  the 
good  old  times  executions  were  looked  upon  in  a  much 
more  matter-of-course  light  than  they  are  in  modern 
days.  They  were  really  public  entertainments  in  a 
time  when  entertainments  were  few  and  when  the 
Puritan  public  frowned  on  the  frivolous. 

The  mighty  Whitefield  used  to  preach  on  the  Com- 
mon, and  it  was  the  main  place  of  refuge  for  goods 
and  people  from  the  great  fire  that  less  than  half  a 
century  ago  devastated  the  business  section. 

Flocks  of  pudgy  pigeons  now  hover  about  the  Com- 
mon, and  it  is  a  pretty  sight  to  see  them  come  cir- 
cling and  whirring,  in  graceful  curves  and  full  trust- 
fulness, to  eat  the  crumbs  so  freely  scattered  for 

16 


BOSTON  COMMON 

them.  One  need  not  go  to  Venice  to  find  a  city  where 
citizens  and  visitors  feed  the  pigeons!  Countless 
gray  squirrels  dart  safely  about,  and  the  Common  is 
also  a  popular  place  for  the  airing  of  that  fast-dis- 
appearing race,  the  dog — for  dogs  are  indeed  rapidly 
disappearing,  not  only  on  account  of  city  conditions 
but  in  particular  from  the  continuous  and  deadly  at- 
tacks of  the  automobile;  and  so  the  broad  Common, 
without  automobiles  as  it  is,  is  a  rallying  place  for 
dog  owners  and  their  dogs.  They  make  a  sort  of 
last  stand  here !  But  never  do  you  hear  a  man  whis- 
tle for  his  dog  in  Boston ;  not  even  on  the  Common. 
It  simply  isn't  done!  And  if  a  thing  isn't  done  in 
Boston,  you  mustn't  do  it! 

The  Common  has  from  the  first  been  a  place  for 
spectacles  of  one  kind  or  another;  not  only  such  as 
the  drilling  of  soldiers  or  the  execution  of  people  of 
unpopular  opinions,  but  many  and  many  other  kinds. 
There  comes  pleasantly  the  thought  of  what  a  pretty 
picture  it  must  have  presented  on  that  long-ago  after- 
noon, far  back  before  the  Bevolution,  when,  under  the 
auspices  of  a  society  for  the  promotion  of  industry 
and  frugality  (the  Bostonians  have  always  had  a 
partiality  for  long  titles!),  some  three  hundred  de- 
mure maidens,  "young  female  spinsters,  decently 
dressed,"  as  the  old-time  phrasing  has  it,  came  out 
here  on  the  Common  with  their  spinning  wheels,  and 
sat  here  and  spun,  with  busy  demureness,  prettily 
playing  Priscilla  to  the  admiring  John  Aldens  among 
the  watching  throng.  What  a  charming  memory  it 
makes  for  the  Common!    How  one  thinks  of  the 

17 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Twelfth  Night  lines  about  the  "spinsters  and  knitters 
in  the  sun,"  and  the  "free  maids  that  weave  their 
threads!" 

One  notices  that  the  Bostonian  of  those  old  days 
did  not  consider  a  spinster  as  necessarily  a  female; 
a  city  of  spinsters  would  not  need  to  be  a  city  of 
women;  and  after  all,  the  word  spinster  might 
properly  be  used  as  meaning  merely  spinner.  But 
the  explanatory  words  "decently  dressed"  would 
seem  to  deserve  further  light:  could  any  young  fe- 
male spinster  of  pre-E evolutionary  days  ever  have 
dressed  otherwise!     The  very  thought  is  incredible. 

The  genial  freedom  for  which  the  Common  stands 
was  well  illustrated  by  a  story  told  me  by  a  Boston 
lady,  of  her  last  meeting  with  Louisa  M.  Alcott ;  for 
a  little  niece  came  running  up,  exclaiming  excitedly, 
1  *  Oh,  Aunt  Louisa !  I  just  feel  that  I  want  to  scream ! ' ' 
Whereupon  the  creator  of  "Little  Women"  most 
placidly  replied,  "Very  well,  dear:  just  go  out  on  the 
Common  and  scream. ' '  And  that  was  both  wise  and 
illustrative. 

Old-time  city  that  it  is,  Boston  has  an  old-time 
fancy  for  observing  holidays.  Even  on  the  last  Col- 
umbus Day  it  seemed  as  if  every  store  was  closed  and 
that  every  citizen  was  either  at  the  ball  game — some 
40,000  were  there,  with  at  least  half  as  many  more 
anxious  to  get  in — or  else  walking  on  or  beside  the 
Common.  And  when  night  fell,  it  seemed  as  if  every- 
body went  to  the  Common,  for  there  were  fireworks 
given  by  the  city,  with  lavishness  of  expense  and  su- 
perbness  of  effect.    Mighty  crowds  were  gathered 

18 


BOSTON  COMMON 

and  hundreds  of  motor  cars  were  lined  up  around  the 
Common's  edge,  and  when,  at  the  close,  the  American 
flag  was  flung  to  the  night  in  colors  of  blazing  fire, 
every  motor  horn  honked  joyously  and  every  indi- 
vidual joyously  cheered.  For  this  was  their  own 
Common. 


CHAPTEE  III 

BOSTON   PREFERRED 

ATURALLY  enough,  next  to  Bos- 
ton Common  comes  Boston  Pre- 
ferred! For  the  term  can  very 
well  be  used  in  referring  to  Bea- 
con Hill,  which  edges  and  over- 
looks the  Common  and  is  still  the 
finest  residence  section  of  the  city. 
And  this  Boston  Preferred,  this 
Beacon  Hill,  still  stands  for  the 
exclusiveness,  the  permanence,  the 
fixity,  of  Boston  society;  it  stands 
for  the  social  cohesion  of  the  city. 

Beacon  Hill  is  still  of  very  considerable  altitude, 
even  though  it  was  long  ago  lowered,  by  vigorous 
cutting-down,  from  the  triple-peaked  height  that  it 
was  originally  when  it  gave  Boston  its  first  and 
grandiose  name  of  Tri-Mountain.  The  triple-peak 
disappeared  and  a  single  rounded  top  remained.  The 
State  House  stands  on  the  present  summit  of  the 
hill,  and  the  top  of  its  great  gold  dome  is  at  the  same 
height  as  was  the  top  of  the  hill  itself  originally. 
The  hill  is  still  so  steep  that  in  places  there  are 
lengths  of  iron  handrails  set  into  and  against  the 

20 


BOSTON  PEEFEBEED^ 

buildings  for  the  aid  of  pedestrians  in  icy  weather, 
and  there  are  notices  at  the  foot  of  some  of  the  hills 
to  warn  vehicles  not  to  attempt  them  when  the  slopes 
are  icy  but  to  take  some  roundabout  course  instead 
— with  Bostonian  attention  to  detail,  the  particular 
course  being  suggested.  And  at  teas  or  receptions  the 
waiting  motor-cars  are  likely  to  be  standing  with 
their  wheels  turned  rakishly  against  the  curb  for 
safety.  And  on  the  most  slippery  days  the  motors 
and  carriages  that  have  dared  to  venture  upon  the 
actual  slopes  go  dangerously,  for  the  horses  slip  in 
nervous  helplessness,  and  now  and  then  some  motor 
skids  and  slides  and  whirls  and  either  dashes  against 
the  curb  or  slides  swift  and  uncontrolled  to  the  foot 
of  the  hill. 

And  as  to  the  name  of  the  hill,  no  one  need  think 
that  beacons  are  but  a  picturesque  figure  of  speech 
in  regard  to  long-past  American  days,  for  beacons 
were  a  very  real  and  at  the  same  time  an  extremely 
romantic  feature  of  early  life  in  this  country.  Bar- 
oness Eiedesel,  the  wife  of  the  Brunswick  general 
captured  with  Burgoyne,  tells  that  when  she  was  with 
her  captive  husband  in  Cambridge  there  was  an  alarm 
which  caused  a  rising  of  the  entire  countryside,  that 
barrels  of  pitch  blazed  on  the  hilltops,  and  that  for 
some  days  armed  Americans  came  hurrying  in,  some 
of  them  even  without  shoes  and  stockings,  but  all 
eager  and  ready  to  fight.  Historians  have  so  ignored 
the  romantic  in  America  that  they  have  almost  suc- 
ceeded in  giving  Americans  themselves  the  idea  that 
the  romantic  never  existed  here, 

2X 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Beacon  Hill  is  the  part  of  Boston  that  is  still  full 
of  fine  old  homes.  They  are  not  the  earliest  houses 
of  the  city,  they  are  not  even  pre-Bevolutionary,  but 
they  are  of  the  fine  period  following  shortly  after  the 
Bevolution.  They  are  generous,  comfortable,  well 
proportioned,  dignified  houses,  with  their  soft-toned 
brick  and  their  typical  bowed  fronts  and  their  general 
air  of  spaciousness  and  geniality — the  bows  in  the 
fronts  being  gentle  outward  swells  of  the  walls  from 
top  to  bottom  of  the  house,  with  two  windows  in  each 
bow,  one  on  each  side  and  none  in  the  middle ;  some- 
thing entirely  different  from  most  modern  bay-win- 
dows, of  Boston  and  elsewhere,  which  are  excres- 
cences with  three  windows.  Quite  English,  old-fash- 
ioned English,  are  the  Beacon  Hill  bow-fronts ;  very 
much  the  kind  of  fronts  that  Barrie  somewhere  de- 
scribes as  bringing  to  a  stop  the  people  driving 
through  a  little  village. 

That  this  part  of  Boston  is  really  on  a  hill  is  recog- 
nized as  you  climb  it ;  and  if,  on  some  of  the  streets, 
you  sit  inside  of  one  of  the  bowed  windows  and  a 
man  is  walking  down  the  hill,  you  are  likely  to  see  him 
from  the  waist  up  as  he  passes  the  upper  window,  and 
to  see  only  the  top  of  his  hat  when  he  passes  the 
lower!  But  an  even  better  way  to  realize  just  how 
much  of  a  hill  this  still  is,  is  to  look  back  at  it  from 
one  of  the  bridges  over  the  Charles  for,  from  such 
a  viewpoint,  this  part  of  the  city  rises  prominent  and 
steep,  with  its  congregated  mass  of  buildings  etched 
dim  and  dark  against  the  sky,  like  an  old-time  engrav- 
ing darkened  and  at  the  same  time  beautified  with 

22 


BOSTON  PREFERRED 

age.  This  Beacon  Hill  is  so  charming  a  part  of  the 
city  as  to  be  supreme  among  American  perched  places 
for  delightfulness  of  homes  and  city  living. 

Mount  Vernon  Street  is  the  finest  bit  of  this  fine 
district.  One  of  the  old  residents  of  the  street  said 
to  me,  with  more  than  a  touch  of  pride,  that  Henry 
James  termed  it  the  only  respectable  street  in  Amer- 
ica. Well,  Henry  James  liked  Mount  Vernon  Street 
very  much  indeed,  although  he  did  not  write  pre- 
cisely what  was  quoted  to  me  as  being  his.  What 
he  wrote  was  that  this  was  the  happiest  street  scene 
our  country  could  show  (perhaps  I  should  remark 
that  the  context  shows  him  to  use  " happy"  in  the 
general  sense  of  felicitous),  "and  as  pleasant,  on 
those  respectable  lines,  in  a  degree  not  surpassed  even 
among  outward  pomps."  After  all,  looking  at  his 
words  again,  there  need  be  small  wonder  that  he  was 
misquoted,  for  who,  except  a  devoted  disciple  of 
James,  could  be  expected  to  understand  precisely 
what  this  phrasing  means !  But  the  general  impres- 
sion is  clear,  and  that  is  that  Henry  James,  critically 
conversant  as  he  was  with  the  most  beautiful  streets 
of  Europe,  and  idolizing  Europe,  still  had  high  ad- 
miration for  beautiful  Mount  Vernon  Street. 

The  street  is  one  of  serenity,  and  there  is  a  certain 
benignancy  of  dignity  which  seems  to  make  an  at- 
mosphere of  its  own ;  there  is  a  constant  beauty  of 
restraint,  and  of  even  a  sort  of  retiring  seclusion, 
even  though  the  houses  are  built  close  together.  It  is 
indeed  a  felicitous  street,  and  the  more  felicitous 
from  a  certain  crookedness,  or  at  least  out-of-straight- 

23 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ness,  in  its  street  lines,  that  comes  from  quite  a  num- 
ber of  unexpected  and  unexplainable  little  bends,  so 
slight  as  not  at  first  to  be  noticed,  but  which  add  ma- 
terially to  effectiveness. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  that  Mount  Vernon 
Street  is  the  only  part  of  Beacon  Hill  that  is  full  of 
charm,  for  there  are  other  charming  streets  as  well, 
notably  Chestnut  Street,  rich  in  old-time  atmosphere, 
and  Beacon  Street,  fronting  bravely  out  over  the  Com- 
mon, and  that  charming  Louisburg  Square  about 
which  all  of  Beacon  Hill  may  be  said  to  cluster :  and  it 
may  be  mentioned  that  the  Beacon  Hillers  like  to  pro- 
nounce Louisburg  with  the  "s"  sounded. 

Louisburg  Square  is  like  Gramercy  Park  in  New 
York,  in  that  the  people  who  own  the  abutting  prop- 
erties possess  certain  ownership  in  it — the  central 
portion  being  oval  and  not  square,  and  the  entire 
square  being  oblong.  It  is  amusing  that  when  the 
trees  in  the  center  are  trimmed  and  lopped  the  wood 
is  divided  into  bundles  and  parcels  and  evenly  dis- 
tributed for  fireplace  burning  among  all  of  the  ad- 
joining property  holders. 

In  any  city,  even  in  Europe,  Louisburg  Square 
would  at  once  attract  attention  as  a  charming  little 
bit.  Its  central  oval  is  green,  tree  shaded,  with  grass 
within  an  iron  fence,  and  all  about  it  are  fine  old 
houses  of  old  Boston  type.  It  is  really  a  bit  of  old 
London,  and  that  this  is  no  mere  fancy  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  when  a  country- wide  search  was  made  by 
a  moving  picture  concern  which  was  preparing  for 
an  elaborate  presentation  of  Vanity  Fair,  the  search 

24 


BOSTON  PEEFEERED 

resulted  in  fixing  upon  this  little  L'ouisburg  Square, 
with  its  shading  trees  and  old-fashioned  house-fronts, 
to  represent  the  Eussell  Square  of  London  and  of 
Thackeray.  A  house  was  chosen — any  one  of  a  num- 
ber might  have  been  chosen — for  the  Osborne  home, 
and  the  street  sign  of  "Louisburg  Square"  was  taken 
down  and  "Eussell  Square"  was  substituted,  but  no 
other  alteration  was  needed.  I  went  to  see  the  pic- 
ture given,  and  had  I  not  positively  known  that  it 
was  Louisburg  Square  I  should  never  have  doubted 
that  it  was  really  the  familiar  Eussell  Square  at 
which  I  was  looking.  That  the  house  chosen  was 
Number  20  adds  a  point  of  interest,  for  it  is  the  house 
in  which  the  wonderful  singer,  Jenny  Lind,  was  mar- 
ried to  her  accompanist,  Otto  Goldschmidt,  in  the 
course  of  that  remarkable  American  tour  in  which 
she  was  given  $175,000  and  all  of  her  expenses,  while 
her  manager,  P.  T.  Barnum,  received  as  his  share 
$500,000. 

There  are  two  little  statues,  modestly  pedes- 
taled, within  the  oval  of  green,  one  at  either  end,  and 
each  of  them  is  a  little  smaller  than  life  size.  They 
are  so  quietly  sedate,  these  smallish  marble  men,  that 
they  seem  as  if  made  with  particular  thought  of  the 
sedateness  of  this  smallish  square.  One  of  the  fig- 
ures, so  one  recognizes,  is  of  Columbus,  but  the  other 
is  so  unfamiliar,  with  a  face  so  different  from  that  of 
any  well-known  American,  that  one  wonders  in  vain 
who  it  can  possibly  be — and  jLhen  it  is  learned  that  it 
is  Aristides !  One  helplessly  wonders  why  Aristides 
the  Just  stands  here!    And  the  matter  seems  still 

25 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

stranger  when  one  learns  that,  so  the  residents  tell 
you,  these  two  marble  monuments  were  the  very  first 
of  all  the  Boston  public  monuments  to  individuals. 

Something  approaching  a  century  ago,  so  it  ap- 
pears, a  Greek  merchant  settled  in  Boston  and  made 
his  home  here  on  Louisburg  Square,  and  he  so  loved 
the  environment  that  he  had  these  monuments  sent 
over  from  Greece  and  presented  them  to  the  city  to 
stand  forever  here ;  choosing  Columbus  as  his  idea  of 
the  man  most  representative  of  all  America,  and  Aris- 
tides  because  he  personally  loved  the  good  old  Greek, 
his  own  countryman.  A  story  like  that  does  add  so 
much  to  the  charm  of  a  charming  place. 

This  old  part  of  the  city,  and  particularly  Louis- 
burg Square,  is  a  gathering  place  for  cats ;  not  home- 
less cats  that  furtively  creep  away,  but  sleek,  sedate, 
well-fed,  lovable  and  likable  cats;  cats  come  here  to 
meet  each  other  or  to  hunt  birds  or  just  to  take  a 
stroll.  They  are  of  all  races,  sizes,  and  colors,  from 
the  big,  glorious  yellow  to  the  shiny-coated  jet  black. 
Sometimes  only  one  or  two  are  in  sight;  at  other 
times  there  may  be  several ;  then,  when  these  wander 
off,  others  will  wander  incidentally  in,  perhaps  only 
one  or  two  again  or  perhaps  a  group.  When  tired  of 
walking  or  of  hunting  or  of  exchanging  compliments 
with  one  another  they  are  not  unlikely  to  rest  com- 
fortably on  the  bases  of  the  monuments,  generally 
choosing,  for  some  obscure  catlike  reason,  Columbus 
in  preference  to  Aristides;  indeed,  a  cat  on  Colum- 
bus is  a  familiar  neighborhood  sight. 

Here  on  Beacon  Hill  some  of  the  houses  have  panes 

26 


BOSTON  PREFEBEED 

of  purple  glass  in  their  windows,  and  one  learns  that 
this  empurpling  effect  makes  the  house  owners  very- 
proud  indeed.  It  seems  that  quite  a  quantity  of  win- 
dow glass  was  made  which  contained  some  unexpected 
material,  just  when  some  of  the  best  houses  here- 
abouts were  building,  and  that  it  was  used  in  these 
houses,  and  that  in  course  of  time  and  the  action  of 
the  sunlight,  the  glass  containing  the  unexpected  sub- 
stance turned  purple  and  that  purple  it  has  ever  since 
remained.  Just  why  it  should  be  a  matter  of  special 
pride  to  have  too  much  foreign  substance  in  one's 
window  glass  it  is  hard  for  even  the  Bostonians  to 
explain,  for  they  realize  that  the  houses  are  just  as 
old,  and  would  look  just  as  old,  without  the  purple 
panes;  but  none  the  less,  to  them  it  represents 
vitreous  connection  with  a  proud  and  precious  past. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  similar  pride  used  to  be  felt  by 
the  owners  of  some  old-time  houses  on  Clinton  Place 
and  Irving  Place  in  New  York  City,  which  also  pos- 
sessed purple  panes.  One  wonders  if  there  is  some 
subtle  and  subconscious  connection  between  the  ideas 
of  purple  glass  and  blue  blood;  at  any  rate,  the 
owners  have  all  the  sense  of  living  in  the  purple. 

Boston  goes  to  sleep  early,  and  Beacon  Hill  goes 
even  earlier  than  does  the  rest  of  the  city.  And,  the 
people  once  in  bed,  it  takes  a  good  deal  to  rouse  them. 
At  a  few  minutes  before  eleven  one  night  I  was  walk- 
ing down  Mount  Vernon  Street,  with  the  houses  all 
blank  and  black,  when  I  saw  an  automobile  fire-engine 
and  hook-and-ladder  start  climbing  up  the  hill. 
Never  have  I  heard  so  terrific  a  street  noise.    For  the 

27 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

heavy  motors  were  on  low  gear,  and  each  moment 
they  were  almost  stalling,  and  they  were  grating, 
grinding  and  shrieking  as  they  slowly  fought  their 
way,  with  noises  that  shattered  the  very  air.  One 
would  have  thought  that  every  individual  on  the  hill 
would  be  aroused.  But  no !  If  any  house  on  Beacon 
Hill  must  burn,  it  must  be  before  eleven  at  night  or 
else  neighbors  refuse  to  be  interested.  Two  serv- 
ants opened  a  dormer  window  and  looked  out — and 
that  was  all! 

Beacon  Hill,  the  height  of  exclusiveness,  the  cita- 
del of  aristocracy,  all  this  it  has  long  been,  as  if 
its  being  a  hill  aided  in  giving  it  literal  unapproach- 
ableness.  It  still  retains  its  prideful  poise,  in  its  out- 
ward and  visible  signs  of  perfectly  cared-for  houses 
and  correctness  of  dress  and  manners  and  equipage. 
But  the  gradual  approach  of  changes  is  shown  by  shy 
little  signs,  frightened  at  their  own  temerity,  that 
here  and  there  on  Beacon  Street  modestly  print  the 
names  of  this  or  that  publisher,  and  by  other  little 
signs  on  Pinckney  Street  which  set  forth  the  single 
word  " Rooms.' ' 

Some  years  ago  there  was  something  of  a  migration 
from  this  region  to  the  Back  Bay,  and  many  wealthy 
folk  of  Boston  now  live  over  there,  but  the  better 
families  have  always  looked  on  the  Back  Bay  as  not 
to  be  compared  with  Beacon  Hill. 

From  the  first  a  poorer  and,  from  the  standpoint 
of  Beacon  Hill,  an  undesirable,  population  has 
swarmed  up  against  the  barriers  from  the  north  side, 
the  side  farthest  away  from  the  Common,  but  for 

28 


BOSTON  PKEFEERED 

generation  after  generation  the  barriers  have  held 
firm  against  them,  and  now  there  are  even  signs  of 
redeeming  a  little  of  this  adjoining  district.  Just 
off  one  of  these  poorer  streets,  I  noticed  a  courtyard, 
Bellingham  Court  (the  old  governor's  name  has  an 
aristocratic  sound!),  running  back  for  some  two  hun- 
dred feet  to  a  high  wall  that  once  was  blank,  and  not 
only  is  that  wall  now  thick-covered  with  ivy,  but  on 
either  side  of  the  brick-paved  courtyard  the  few 
modest  little  houses  are  flower-bedecked,  and  green 
with  vines,  and  brass-knockered.  The  courtyard  is 
not  for  vehicles,  and  down  its  center  are  arranged 
neatly  painted  boxes  of  flowers,  with  brilliant  ger- 
aniums the  most  prominent,  as  a  strong  note  is 
needed.  It  is  a  little  sheltered  nook  where  the  com- 
monplace has  been  transformed  into  loveliness. 

Not  all  of  the  old  houses  have  old  Bostonians  liv- 
ing in  them,  for  some  new  Bostonians  are  here  also, 
and  one  of  these  naively  said  to  me  that  on  first  mov- 
ing in  she  was  so  disturbed  by  seeing  people  stop  and 
look  up  at  her  windows  that  she  nervously  went  from 
room  to  room  to  see  if  the  curtains  were  wrong,  only 
to  find  later  that  her  house  was  attracting  attention 
because  it  was  one  of  the  houses  in  which  Louisa  M. 
Alcott  had  lived. 

The  residents  of  this  region,  though  ultra-partic- 
ular in  some  respects,  are  not  afraid  to  do  the  un- 
usual. Two  dear  old  ladies  of  eminently  correct  fam- 
ily, living  in  an  eminently  correct  house,  keep  a  dish- 
pan  chained  to  their  front  doorstep  to  offer  water  to 
dogs  and  cats !    It  would  take  a  lifetime  to  learn  just 

29 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

how  the  people  of  this  city  differentiate  the  things 
that  in  themselves  simply  must  not  be  done,  and  the 
things  which,  no  matter  how  unusual  or  exceptional 
or  odd,  may  be  done  with  impunity. 

That  Beacon  Hill,  with  its  long-maintained  social 
prestige,  is  but  a  few  minutes'  walk  from  the  stir  and 
crowds  and  bustle  of  the  busiest  business  streets,  and 
that  on  its  crest  is  the  very  center  of  the  political 
activities  of  Massachusetts,  the  State  House,  makes 
its  continued  possession  of  these  serried  ranks  of 
capable,  comfortable,  handsome  homes  the  more  sur- 
prising in  these  days  of  constant  American  change, 
and  that  it  is  so  much  of  a  hill  as  always  to  have 
been  impracticable  for  street  cars  seems  to  be  the 
great  single  reason  for  its  being  so  long  left  prac- 
tically unaltered.  The  absence  of  street  cars  also 
adds  very  much  to  the  general  effect  of  serenity  and 
peacefulness. 

Most  of  the  houses  are  of  brick,  unpainted  and  soft 
red,  agreeably  mellowed  and  toned  by  the  weathering 
of  years.  Indeed,  the  effect  of  the  entire  hill  is  an 
effect  of  brick,  for  not  only  are  the  houses  brick  but 
the  typical  ones  are,  in  general,  narrowly  corniced 
with  dentiled  brick,  and  the  brick  walls  drop  down  to 
the  universal  brick  sidewalks  of  the  district.  Yet 
there  is  no  wearisome  likeness  of  design:  continually 
there  is  the  relief  of  the  variant. 

The  accessories  of  the  hill  charmingly  befit  the 
homes,  and  chief  among  these  accessories  is  the 
greenery.  For  there  are  lines  of  trees  on  the  streets, 
and  groups  or  single  trees  in  the  square  or  in  some 

30 


BOSTON  PKEFEEEED 

of  the  gardens  behind  the  homes,  and  here  and  there 
is  a  mighty  spreading  elm,  and  here  and  there  is  a 
flowering  ailanthus,  and  in  every  direction,  on  the 
fronts  or  the  sides  of  the  houses,  one  sees  wistarias 
in  coils  or  convolutions  or  sinuous  lengths,  and  some 
of  the  vines  are  of  giant  thickness,  and  some  clamber 
over  the  iron  balconies,  twisting  and  crushing  and 
knotting  themselves  python-like  around  the  rails ;  and 
one  sees,  too,  the  Boston  ivy,  the  ampelopsis,  sweetly 
massing  its  rich  green  against  the  soft  red  of  brick. 
Innumerable  window-boxes  give  color  and  fragrance 
and  English-like  touches  of  beauty.  And  on  one  of 
these  streets  I  noticed  a  mighty,  ancient  rose  vine, 
almost  a  ruin,  which  has  annually  spread  its  flowers 
there  for  decades.  And  all  of  this  in  the  very  heart 
of  this  old  city ! 

And  one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the  large  old 
houses,  a  mansion  in  very  truth — the  old-time  rule 
in  New  England  being  that  a  mansion  was  a  house 
with  a  servants'  stair,  but  using  the  word  here  in  its 
usual  sense  of  meaning  a  large  and  stately  home — 
has  behind  it,  terraced  above  a  side  street,  a  high-set 
and  level  garden,  with  a  garden-house  of  diamond- 
paned  windows ;  a  garden  rather  melancholy  now  but 
so  romantically  high  perched  as  to  have  all  the  effect 
of  what  the  ancients  meant  by  "hanging  garden." 

That  on  all  of  these  streets  the  houses  are  of  vary- 
ing widths  adds  immensely  to  the  general  picturesque 
effect;  in  fact,  the  streets  which  show  the  greatest 
variety  in  width  of  houses  are  the  most  picturesque. 
None  of  the  streets  is  what  a  Western  man  would 

31 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

call  broad,  and  some  are  really  narrow,  the  narrowest 
of  all  being  little  Acorn  Street,  so  slender  that  you 
may  shake  hands  across  its  width.  An  attractive  lit- 
tle street,  this,  with  its  line  of  neat  little  houses  and 
its  brave  array  of  prettily  framed  doorways  and 
polished  brass  knockers;  the  houses  being  on  one 
side  only  of  the  narrow  way,  facing  the  high  walls, 
trellised  on  top  and  green  with  vines,  of  the  gardens 
of  Mount  Vernon  Street  homes. 

Several  of  the  streets  of  the  hill  climb  straight  and 
steep  from  the  waters  of  the  Back  Bay,  and  there  are 
positively  beautiful  views  looking  down  the  vistaed 
narrowness  and  out  across  the  surface  of  the  water. 
Stand  well  up  on  the  steepness  of  Pinckney  Street,  and 
look  down  at  the  water  sparkling  under  a  sky  of 
Italian  blue,  and  across  the  sweeping  stretch  to  the 
white  classic  temples  gleaming  in  the  sun  on  the 
farther  edge  of  the  Charles  (and  they  look  like 
temples,  although  in  fact  they  are  new  buildings  of  the 
School  of  Technology),  and  you  will  see  how  striking 
and  beautiful  a  city  view  may  be.  Or,  stand  well  up 
on  the  steep  of  Mount  Vernon  Street  in  the  late  after- 
noon of  an  early  autumn  day,  when  the  golden  sun 
transmutes  the  water  of  the  Charles  into  gold,  and 
scatters  showers  of  gold  through  the  branches  of  the 
trees,  and  flings  the  gold  in  splotches  and  streaks  and 
shimmerings  on  the  pavement,  and  all  is  a  glorious 
golden  glamour,  and  again  you  will  realize  how  beau- 
tiful a  view  it  is  possible  for  a  city  to  offer. 

Beacon  Hill  is  so  delightfully  mellow!  And  this 
mellowness  of  aspect  comes  not  only  from  the  fine- 

32 


BOSTON  PEEFEEEED 

ness  of  the  old  houses  in  their  age-weathering  of 
brick,  but  also  from  such  things  as  the  old  iron  bal- 
conies that  hang  in  front  of  the  drawing-room  win- 
dows (all  this  part  of  old  Boston  having  its  drawing- 
rooms  one  flight  up  so  that  the  people,  following  the 
English  tradition,  may  "go  down  to  dinner"),  and 
the  brass  knockers,  and  the  doorknobs  of  brass  or 
old  glass,  and  the  old  frames  of  iron,  leaded  into  brick 
or  stone,  like  those  of  old  Paris  that  used  to  hold 
the  ancient  lanterns  that  roused  the  a  la  lanteme  cry- 
so  terrible  to  the  French  aristocrats,  and  the  old  iron 
rails,  with  little  brass  urns  on  their  posts,  on  the  tops 
of  big-stoned  walls,  and  the  fat  cast-iron  pineapples, 
ancient  emblems  of  hospitality,  and  the  good  old  foot- 
scrapers,  of  fine  dignity  in  spite  of  their  lowly  use ; 
and  one  cannot  pass  along  any  of  these  old  streets 
without  seeing  at  windows,  as  if  turning  a  cold  shoul- 
der to  the  present  day,  fascinating  chair-backs  of 
Chippendale  or  Sheraton,  or  even  of  the  rare  Ja- 
cobean. 

On  Beacon  Hill  one  is  always  anticipating  the  un- 
usual. And  one  evening,  just  as  dusk  was  softly 
creeping  over  Louisburg  Square,  strains  of  music 
softly  sounded,  with  a  sort  of  gentle  pathos,  and  there 
came  quiveringly  the  old-fashioned  "When  we  think 
of  the  days  that  are  gone,  Maggie."  It  was  played 
so  very,  very  slowly,  so  very,  very  sweetly,  by  two 
quite  oldish  men,  both  of  them  American,  that  window 
after  window  softly  opened  and  women  looked  out, 
and  home-going  men  paused  in  mounting  their  door- 
steps, and  a  tenser  silence,  except  for  the  quivering 

33 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

notes,  fell  over  the  twilight  square,  and  all  intently 
listened,  all  were  moved.  The  two  players,  so  un- 
expectedly American  instead  of  German  or  Italian, 
seemed  strange  memories  of  the  past,  tremulously 
playing  here  their  old-fashioned  music  in  front  of 
these  old-fashioned  houses  that  were,  themselves, 
softly  dimming  like  memories  in  the  twilight. 


\wr~ 


-^ 


CHAPTER  IV 

ON  THE  PRIM,  DECOROUS  HILL 

[HE  streets  of  Boston  are  peopled 
with  shadows  of  the  past;  shad- 
ows of  those  connected  with  the 
historical  or  literary  Boston  that 
has  gone.  Nor  are  all  the  figures 
100 |^  n|  Bostonians.    Here  is  Dickens,  af- 

ter a  long  winter  day's  tramp  out 
into  the  country  with  James  T. 
Fields,  hilariously  swinging  back 
to  the  city  in  a  wild  snow  storm; 
/;  but  suddenly,  near  the  junction  of 

the  Common  and  Charles  Street,  disappearing  from 
view  in  the  swirling  snow  clouds,  only  to  be  dis- 
covered on  the  other  side  of  the  road  helping  to  his 
feet  a  blind  man  who  had  fallen  helplessly  in  a  drift. 
Here  is  Thackeray  driving  down  Tremont  Street  to 
the  lecture  hall,  with  his  extremely  long  legs  hilar- 
iously stuck  out  of  the  carriage  window  in  sheer  joy- 
fulness  that  all  the  tickets  for  his  first  lecture  had 
been  sold!  For  it  will  be  remembered  that  Thack- 
eray came  over  to  give  to  the  Americans  all  four 
Georges  in  return  for  the  one  George  that  we  had 
concluded  to  do  without.  Can  you  imagine  the  feel- 
ings of  the  sedate  Bostonians  as  they  saw  the  great 

35 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Englishman  going  to  his  own  lecture  in  what  with- 
out exaggeration  could  be  called  an  informal  way ! 

How  full  of  life,  of  buoyancy,  were  those  two  won- 
derful Englishmen!  How  impossible  to  picture  any 
Boston  man  so  carried  away  by  success  unless  in  a 
condition  to  be  carried  away  by  the  police !  But,  so 
far  as  that  is  concerned,  it  is  not  likely  that  even 
Thackeray  ever  rode  through  a  street  of  his  own  Eng- 
land in  quite  such  exuberance  of  joy. 

Dickens  liked  Boston,  and  found  what  he  termed 
a  remarkable  similarity  of  tone  between  this  city  and 
Edinburgh.  Thackeray  liked  Boston,  and  used  to 
say  playfully  that  he  always  considered  it  his  native 
city.  Both  men  made  Boston  their  landing-place  on 
coming  from  England,  and  this  could  scarcely  be 
looked  upon  as  chance,  or  merely  that  Boston  was  the 
terminal  point  of  a  steamer  line,  but  it  was  also,  no 
doubt,  because  the  two  chose  the  city  whose  reputa- 
tion in  England  most  appealed  to  them;  for  Boston 
used  to  be  the  center  of  American  literary  life. 

It  was  in  Boston  that  Thackeray  first  tasted  Amer- 
ican oysters;  and  enormous  ones  were  purposely  set 
before  him  at  the  now-vanished  Tremont  House,  ad- 
joining the  Old  Granary  Graveyard,  on  Tremont 
Street  (with  the  ' ' e ' '  in ' '  Trem' '  short  if  you  would  be 
thought  a  Bostonian!),  and  he  rejected  the  largest 
because  it  looked  like  the  High  Priest's  servant's  ear 
that  Peter  cut  off,  and  with  difficulty  swallowed  the 
smallest,  gasping  out  that  he  felt  as  if  he  had  swal- 
lowed a  baby.  I  think  people  were  more  natural, 
more  frank,  more  full  of  spontaneity  in  those  days, 

36 


ON  THE  PEIM,  DECOKOUS  HILL 

less  afraid  of  what  other  people  might  think;  or  at 
least  our  distinguished  visitors  from  abroad  gave  ad- 
mirable object  lessons  along  that  line. 

And  picture  Thackeray — and  isn't  it  a  delightful 
picture! — dashing  down  the  slope  of  Beacon  Street 
toward  the  home  of  the  historian  Prescott,  gleefully 
waving  two  volumes  of  " Esmond' '  that  had  just  come 
to  him  from  across  the  Atlantic  and  which  he  was  tak- 
ing to  Prescott  because  Prescott  had  given  him  his 
first  dinner  in  America — picture  him  thus  dashing 
down  Beacon  Street  and  joyously  crying  out  to  a 
friend  whom  he  passed :  ' '  This  is  the  very  best  I  can 
do !  I  stand  by  this  book,  and  am  willing  to  leave  it 
when  I  go  as  my  card!" 

The  Prescott  house  is  still  there,  55  Beacon  Street, 
well  down  toward  the  very  foot  of  the  hill  and  facing 
out  over  the  Common.  It  is  a  broad-fronted  house, 
built  in  balanced  symmetry,  a  house  of  buff-painted 
brick  with  rounded  swells,  with  roof  fronted  with 
heavy  white  balusters,  with  window  trimmings  and 
door  pilastered  in  white,  with  black  iron  balcony  light 
and  graceful  in  design;  it  is  a  fine-looking  house,  a 
house  with  a  distinguished  air.  And  somehow  it 
seems  to  suggest  a  portrait  of  the  admirable  Prescott 
himself.  It  is  a  house  worth  seeing  on  its  own  ac- 
count and  also  because  it  was  there  that  Thackeray 
received  the  inspiration  for  the  sequel  to  the  story 
which  we  see  him  so  gleefully  carrying,  the  sequel  to 
"Esmond,"  for  it  was  in  that  house  that  he  saw  the 
two  swords  (now  in  the  possession  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Historical  Society)  that  had  been  carried  by 

37 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

relatives  of  Prescott  in  the  Bevolutionary  War,  one  of 
them  having  been  gallantly  drawn  in  the  service  of  the 
King  and  the  other  with  equal  gallantry  in  the  service 
of  America.  Here  Thackeray  pondered  the  romance 
in  such  a  situation,  and  the  result  was  "The  Vir- 
ginians," with  one  Esmond  to  fight  for  the  King  and 
the  other  for  Washington. 

Over  and  over  one  realizes  what  possibilities  of  fine 
romance  lie  about  us  here  in  America.  Not  merely 
romance  good  enough  for  minor  writers,  as  some 
would  have  us  believe,  but  romance  good  enough  for 
the  giants.  For  Scott  made  brave  use  of  the  brave 
old  story  of  the  Eegicide  and  Hadley,  and  he  took 
his  most  beloved  of  all  characters,  Eebecca,  from 
Philadelphia  and  Washington  Irving ;  and  Thackeray 
took  his  Virginians  from  Boston  and  Prescott; — and 
I  might  refer  to  Dickens  and  "Chuzzlewit"  were  that 
not  something  far  different  from  romance. 

Boston  could  never  forgive  Dickens;  and  that  he 
patronizingly  wrote,  years  afterwards,  that  America 
had  so  changed  that  he  could  now  speak  well  of  it, 
aggravated  rather  than  mitigated  the  enormity  of  his 
literary  offense,  which  was,  not  that  he  had  found 
people  in  America  to  criticise,  for  he  had  found  peo- 
ple to  criticise  in  his  own  England,  but  that,  judging 
from  "Chuzzlewit,"  he  had  found  no  one  to  think 
highly  of  in  America.  He  had  been  cordially  re- 
ceived by  fine  gentlemen,  cultivated  and  polished  men, 
who  would  have  been,  and  some  of  whom  were,  re- 
ceived as  fine  gentlemen  in  the  very  finest  society  in 
Europe,  yet  none  the  less  he  went  home  and  wrote  the 

38 


ON  THE  PKIM,  DECOKOUS  HILL 

book  that  he  had  planned  in  advance  to  write,  follow- 
ing the  advice  that  he  had  long  before  put  in  the 
month  of  Sam  Weller,  to  be  sure  to  make  a  book  on 
America  so  abusive  that  it  would  be  sure  to  sell;  he 
had,  with  amazing  baldness,  followed  the  published 
prejudices  of  Mrs.  Trollope,  which  he  had  absorbed 
before  leaving  England;  he  wrote  of  Americans  as 
ignorant  and  boastful  boors;  and  of  course,  in  the 
new  portions  of  our  country,  there  had  to  be  many 
such.  He  wrote  of  America  as  being  nothing  but 
a  nation  of  boors  when  he  well  knew  us  to  be  a  nation 
possessing  not  only  such  men  as  Hawthorne  and 
Longfellow  and  Webster  and  Motley  and  Prescott 
and  Fields  but  many  a  cultured  man  of  business  and 
many  a  cultured  family. 

Fields,  with  whom  Dickens  loved  to  take  long 
tramps,  lived  on  Charles  Street,  at  148,  well  on  the 
way  that  the  jogging  horse-car  used  to  take  towards 
Cambridge.  It  is  now  a  highly  undesirable  street, 
with  infinite  dirt  and  noise,  and  could  at  no  time  have 
been  really  attractive.  And  the  Fields  house  was  al- 
ways hopelessly  commonplace,  a  house  high-set  and 
bare  in  a  row  of  houses  all  high-set  and  bare,  built  in 
an  era  of  architectural  bad  taste.  It  is  a  brick  house 
with  brown  stone  trimmings,  and  is  empty  as  I  write, 
for  Fields  long  since  died  and  now  his  widow  is  dead, 
and  the  untenanted  house  has  been  drearily  splashed, 
across  the  narrow  sidewalk,  from  the  chronically 
muddy  street;  splashed  with  brown  and  yellow  dabs 
to  more  than  the  tops  of  the  front  doors  and  win- 
dows, and  remaining  drearily  uncleaned. 

39 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

I  sometimes  think  of  Fields  as  having  been  Bos- 
ton's most  important  literary  man.  I  do  not  mean  as 
a  writer,  although  he  did  write  one  book  that  has 
endeared  him  to  a  host  of  readers,  but  what  he  really 
did  for  literature  was  as  an  intelligent  and  keenly 
appreciative  critic  and  an  inspirer  of  literary  men. 
He  won  the  devotion  of  a  host  of  friends;  he  wel- 
comed distinguished  foreign  writers  and  gave  them 
fine  impressions  of  American  society  and  literature ; 
he  counseled  and  inspired  American  writers  and  held 
them  up  to  their  best ;  it  was  even  owing  to  him  and 
his  personal  urgency  that  the  "  Scarlet  Letter"  saw 
the  light.  He  was  one  of  those  rare  men  who  could 
judge  of  the  value  of  writing  without  having  to  wait 
to  see  it  in  print  and  without  waiting  to  watch  its 
reception  by  the  public.  He  was  an  anticipatory 
critic  of  insight  and  judgment.  And  that  he  was  at 
the  same  time  a  publisher  and  for  years  even  a  maga- 
zine editor  also,  was  in  every  respect  fortunate,  for 
he  could  publish  what  he  thought  worth  while  to  the 
mutual  advantage  of  himself  and  the  authors. 

It  is  to  the  lasting  honor  of  Fields  that,  as  Whipple 
wrote  of  him  after  a  life-long  friendship,  he  had  de- 
liberately formed  in  his  mind,  from  the  start,  the 
ideal  of  a  publisher  who  should  profit  by  men  of  let- 
ters while  at  the  same  time  men  of  letters  should 
profit  by  him,  and  that  he  consistently  and  success- 
fully lived  up  to  this  ideal. 

In  the  old  days  there  was  a  serious  effort  to  make 
Charles  Street  a  fine  home  street.  Thomas  Bailey 
Aldrich  came  here  for  a  time  from  the  slope  of  Bea- 

40 


ON  THE  PEIM,  DECOEOUS  HILL 

con  Hill,  making  his  home  at  131,  and  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  came  for  a  time  to  a  house,  since  destroyed 
in  the  building  of  a  hospital,  at  164;  but  the  street 
early  showed  its  hopeless  disadvantages,  becoming,  as 
it  did  long  ago,  a  great  teaming  thoroughfare  circling 
the  foot  of  Beacon  Hill  from  one  part  of  the  city  to 
another. 

The  advantages  of  Charles  Street  are  on  the  water- 
side; for  it  is  close  to  the  great  broadening  of  the 
Charles  Eiver,  which  has  always  offered  a  beautiful 
view  to  the  windows  looking  out  over  its  sunset 
sweeps  of  water.  Holmes  made  his  home  there,  not 
only  for  the  beauty  of  the  water  views  but  because 
he  intensely  loved  rowing,  and  here  he  had  precisely 
the  opportunity  he  wanted,  with  the  additional  con- 
venience of  keeping  his  boat  at  his  back  door.  But 
the  increasing  disadvantages  of  Charles  Street  out- 
weighed even  these  advantages  of  water  and  view. 

The  great  rooms  of  the  Fields  house  likewise  looked 
out  over  the  water,  and  it  was  deemed  such  a  pleasure 
and  such  an  honor  to  be  a  guest  of  James  T.  Fields 
that  in  the  old  days  every  literary  man  expected  to 
be  given  an  invitation  as  a  hall-mark  of  success. 

Those  were  the  days  when  Boston  authors  were  fine 
gentlemen  and  when  many  a  Boston  fine  gentleman 
was  an  author.  Indeed,  there  has  never  been  a  Grub 
Street  in  Boston.  Those  who  look  up  the  homes  of 
authors  need  not  search  in  the  poorer  parts  of  the 
city  but  among  the  homes  of  the  socially  exclusive, 
and  the  few  exceptions  are  close  by  in  neighborhoods 
that  were  once  just  as  exclusive.    And  this  is  the 

41 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

case  not  only  in  the  city  but  also  in  those  near-by  sub- 
urbs which  are  themselves  essentially  part  of  Boston, 
for  it  was  not  poor  or  unattractive  or  commonplace 
towns  in  which  Hawthorne  and  Longfellow  and  Emer- 
son lived,  but  places  of  such  fine  distinction  and 
beauty  as  Cambridge  and  Concord. 

In  this  matter  of  the  fine  living  of  its  authors  Bos- 
ton stands  almost  unique  among  cities,  the  only  one 
which  has  rivaled  it  being  Edinburgh,  where  the 
group  of  writers  who  were  so  famous  a  century  ago 
lived  mostly  in  the  best  residential  section.  In  no 
other  particular  is  the  resemblance  between  Edin- 
burgh and  Boston  so  interesting  as  this. 

On  Mount  Vernon  Street,  at  59,  in  the  very  heart 
of  conservative  aristocracy,  is  the  house  that  was  the 
latest  home  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  a  real  man- 
sion, broad  of  front,  with  classic  pedimented  doorway 
of  white  marble  with  fluted  Doric  pillars,  and  with 
entablatures  of  marble  set  between  the  second  and 
third  stories,  and  with  a  rounding  swell,  and  a  charm- 
ing iron  balcony,  and  four  stone  wreaths  along  the 
cornice,  and  four  dormer  windows  above ;  and  in  front 
of  the  house  there  is  even  a  generous  grass-plot. 

Mount  Vernon  Street,  that  very  citadel  and  center 
of  the  Brahmins,  as  the  exclusive  Boston  folk  of  a 
past  generation  loved  to  call  themselves,  attracted 
also  for  a  time  the  most  distinguished  of  all  the 
Boston  writers  of  to-day,  Margaret  Deland,  who  lived 
for  a  time  at  76,  in  an  old  house  whose  front  wall  has 
long  horizontal  sets  of  windows  that  were  put  in  for 
the  sake  of  giving  an  unusual  amount  of  light  and 

42 


ON  THE  PEIM,  DECOKOUS  HILL 

sun  to  the  flower-loving  author.  On  the  curbstone 
near  this  house  is  the  quaintest  old  lamppost  in  Bos- 
ton, a  wrought  iron  frame  set  on  a  slim  granite  shaft. 
After  her  earlier  successes  Mrs.  Deland  left  this  home 
for  one  farther  down  the  street,  and  then  moved  over 
to  the  Back  Bay,  still  keeping  up  the  Boston  literary 
tradition  of  living  among  people  of  wealth.  The 
other  day  I  noticed  in  Boston's  best  morning  news- 
paper a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Deland,  with  a  review  of  her 
latest  work,  a  new  Old  Chester  book,  and  the  review 
was  amusing,  because  it  described  her  as  being  a  New 
England  woman  who  writes  with  remarkable  discern- 
ment of  a  New  England  village,  when  as  a  matter  of 
fact  she  came  here  from  Western  Pennsylvania,  and 
her  Old  Chester  is  near  Pittsburgh.  It  is  the  natural 
tendency  of  Boston  to  assume  that  an  excellent  thing 
is  of  Boston  or  at  least  New  England  origin. 

On  Mount  Vernon  Street,  83,  is  the  home  of  Wil- 
liam Ellery  Channing,  a  fine,  austere  house  of  dig- 
nity befitting  the  high  standing  of  the  man;  a  house 
with  a  low  embankment  wall,  and  grass,  and  a  balcony 
of  a  design  that  is  like  the  backs  of  Chinese  Chippen- 
dales. His  is  one  of  the  few  homes  that  show  a 
tablet,  and  it  is  the  quietest  and  most  unobtrusive 
of  tablets,  set  as  it  is  in  the  ironwork  of  the  gatepost. 
In  Boston  everybody  knows  the  name  of  this  Chan- 
ning, and  he  has  been  honored  with  a  public  monu- 
ment over  beside  the  Public  Garden,  and  Longfellow 
wrote  a  poem  to  him,  and  he  is  remembered  as  a  great 
figure  and  as  a  leader  in  thought;  yet  the  Channing 
that  those  who  are  not  Bostonians  most  naturally 

43 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

recall  is  the  William  Ellery  Channing,  the  relative 
and  namesake  of  this  Channing  of  Boston,  whom 
Hawthorne  so  loved  and  wrote  of  so  lovingly. 

On  the  difficult  slope  of  the  next  street  to  steep  Mt. 
Vernon,  on  Pinckney  street,  named  in  honor  of  that 
Pinckney  who  left  us  the  heritage  of  that  upstanding 
phrase,  "Millions  for  defense  but  not  one  cent  for 
tribute,' 9  on  that  Pinckney  Street,  at  84,  is  the  home 
where  Aldrich,  early  in  his  career,  wrote  his  immortal 
juvenile,  the  "Story  of  a  Bad  Boy."  It  is  a  low-set 
and  almost  gloomy  looking  house,  for  it  is  without  the 
usual  high  basement  of  the  vicinity.  Still  it  is  a  pleas- 
ant house  after  all,  and  one  wonders  why  friends  of 
Aldrich  always  referred  to  it  as  a  "little"  house,  for 
it  is  four  windows  wide  instead  of  the  usual  three  of 
its  immediate  neighbors.  The  house  has  a  peculiarly 
ugly  over-hanging  bay-window,  misguidedly  set  by 
some  would-be  improver  against  what  was  once  the 
attractive  front  of  the  house,  and  the  first  impulse  is 
to  say  to  oneself  that  of  course  this  ugly  bay  could  not 
have  been  there  in  the  time  of  Aldrich ;  but  a  lifelong 
resident  of  the  street  told  me  that  she  well  remembers 
the  time  when  he  lived  and  wrote  here  and  that  he 
wrote  his  "Story  of  a  Bad  Boy"  in  this  very  bay-win- 
dow! 

Farther  up  the  hill  on  Pinckney  Street,  at  54,  is  an 
attractive  house  which  may  really  be  called  smallish ; 
one  feels  impelled  to  call  it  "neat"  even  in  a  district 
of  neatness,  and  except  for  that  quality  little  of  the 
distinctive  is  noticed  except  that  it  has  an  eight- 
paneled  front  door  with  the  characteristic  door-knob 

44 


f  c  c  « 
r.  «     * 


.«  •        »  <    ' 


ON  THE  PRIM,  DECOROUS  HILL 

of  silver-glass.  This  house  has  a  most  amusing  con- 
nection with  literature,  for  it  was  here,  in  July  of 
1842,  that  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  wrote  his  note  to 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  asking  him  to  perform  the 
marriage  ceremony  between  himself  and  Sophia  Pea- 
body,  " though  personally  a  stranger  to  you,"  as  he 
expressed  it;  and  the  amusing  feature  was  that  al- 
though Doctor  Clarke  was  told  that  "it  is  our  mutual 
desire  that  you  should  perform  the  ceremony' '  and 
that  a  carriage  would  call  for  him  at  half -past  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  forenoon,  Hawthorne  quite  forgot  to 
mention  the  date  on  which  the  expected  marriage 
was  to  take  place !  And  the  note  itself  was  no  guide, 
for  it  was  merely  dated  "July,"  without  the  day! 
And  Hawthorne  also  quite  forgot  to  mention  where 
he  would  like  the  ceremony  to  be  performed!  Still, 
as  Hawthorne  wrote  the  street  number  on  his 
note,  it  was  possible  to  straighten  the  matter  out 
in  time. 

Still  farther  up  and  on  what  has  now  become  the 
level-top  of  Pinckney  Street,  at  20,  is  one  of  the  houses 
where  the  Alcotts  lived,  a  little,  very  narrow,  high- 
perched  building  with  its  main  floor  reached  by  queer 
abrupt  steps  up  to  a  front  door  deeply  recessed  in  an 
almost  tunnel-like  approach.  The  house  is  of  dingy 
brick  and  has  little  windows,  and  is  immediately  back 
of  the  very  best  of  Mount  Vernon  Street  and  on  a 
queerly  narrowed  part  of  Pinckney  Street.  And 
looking  off  toward  the  broadened  Charles  from  this 
highest  part  of  the  street  there  comes  an  impression 
as  if  the  hill  has  dropped  suddenly  away  and  the 

45 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

classic  temple-like  structures  on  the  farther  side  of 
the  water  are  close  to  the  foot  of  a  precipice. 

The  work  of  Bronson  Alcott  has  been  absolutely  for- 
gotten and  his  very  name  would  be  forgotten  were  it 
not  that  he  was  the  father  of  Louisa  M.  Alcott ;  yet  he 
had  some  most  unusual  qualities.  He  wrote  little  and 
lectured  much;  he  was  not  a  success;  he  was  rather 
tiresome ;  and  yet  with  his  transcendentalism,  with  his 
entirely  vague  thoughts  in  regard  to  what  we  should 
now  call  the  superman,  the  uplift,  he  seems  to  have 
been  near  to  something  very  excellent,  very  modern. 

It  was  to  this  house  on  Pinckney  Street  that  Alcott 
returned  to  his  hard-pressed  family,  one  cold  winter's 
day,  after  a  lecture  tour,  with  his  overcoat  stolen  and 
just  one  single  dollar  in  his  pocket!  And  this  re- 
minds me  of  a  story  that  I  long  ago  heard  out  in 
Cleveland  from  an  old  resident  there  who  told  me 
that  she  remembered  how,  when  a  girl,  Alcott  came 
to  lecture,  and  that  as  they  had  heard  that  he  and 
his  family  were  in  actual  need  of  money  they  actively 
sold  tickets  enough  to  hand  him  three  hundred  dol- 
lars, whereupon  he  said,  quite  beamingly,  that  in 
Buffalo  he  had  seen  a  set  of  valuable  books  that  he 
had  very  much  wished  for  but  had  been  unable  to 
buy,  and  that  now  he  would  go  back  and  get  them  and 
take  them  home  with  him. 

He  was  an  impractical  man,  yet  his  friends  liked 
him  and  smoothed  the  way  for  him,  and  in  his  later 
years  the  Alcott  family  were  delightfully  mainstayed 
by  the  immense  success  of  the  books  of  his  wonderful 
and  universally  loved  daughter. 

46 


ON  THE  PRIM,  DECOROUS  HILL 

The  house  where  Bronson  Alcott  died  at  the  age 
of  almost  ninety,  in  1888,  is  also  on  Beacon  Hill;  a 
decorous,  mid-block,  characteristic  Louisburg  Square 
home,  at  10,  on  the  southern  side  of  the  square ;  it  is 
a  bow-fronted,  white-doored  house  with  a  vestibule, 
with  finely-paneled  white  inner  door,  hospitably  show- 
ing to  the  street;  it  is  a  broad  brick  house  set  on  a 
smooth  granite  foundation  behind  a  little  iron-railed 
space,  with  a  plump  pine-apple  looking  like  a  cheese 
at  the  terminal  of  the  rail. 

His  daughter,  Louisa  M.  Alcott,  who  won  the  hearts 
of  myriads  and  gave  such  unbounded  and  wholesome 
pleasure  with  her  "Little  Women' '  and  "Little  Men," 
was  so  ill,  in  another  part  of  the  city,  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  that  she  was  not  told  of  it,  and  on  the  day  of 
his  funeral  she  herself  died  in  the  belief  that  her  aged 
father  was  still  living. 

A  few  doors  away,  also  facing  out  into  the  greenery 
of  Louisburg  Square,  over  in  its  southwest  corner,  at 
Number  4,  lived  for  a  time  William  Dean  Howells; 
his  once-while  home  being  a  comfortable,  dormered 
house  of  the  customary  brick,  with  long  drawing-room 
windows  on  the  second  floor,  next  door  to  a  larger 
corner  house,  now  a  fraternity  house,  out  of  and  into 
which  young  men  seem  always  to  be  dashing. 

Still  lower  on  the  slope  of  Beacon  Hill,  at  3  West 
Cedar  Street,  is  a  house  that  was  for  a  time  the  home 
of  the  poet  who  figured  among  Longfellow's  notables 
at  the  Wayside  Inn;  for  those  who  were  pictured  as 
gathering  there  and  telling  their  tales  were  all  very 
real  men,  although  some  of  them  were  fancifully  de- 

47 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

scribed.  The  poet  of  the  party  was  a  certain  Thomas 
Parsons  who  was  thought  of  very  highly  by  his  famous 
literary  contemporaries,  although  had  it  not  been  for 
Longfellow  he  would  now  be  quite  forgotten.  He 
made  his  home  for  the  better  part  of  his  best  years  on 
Beacon  Hill  Place,  near  the  State  House,  but  the  wide- 
spreading  State  House  extension  has  taken  street  and 
house,  as  it  has  taken  many  another ;  but  his  home  for 
a  while  was  here  on  West  Cedar  Street,  in  a  small 
cozy,  plain  house  in  an  entire  street  of  similar  cozy 
little  houses,  all  with  flowers  in  window-boxes  and  box- 
bushes  on  the  doorsteps,  all  with  brass  knockers  and 
old  door-knobs  and  arched  doorways.  "A  poet,  too, 
was  there  whose  verse  was  tender,  musical  and  terse,' ' 
as  Longfellow  expressed  it ;  and  it  is  pleasant  to  have 
this  house  mark  a  poet's  memory,  even  though  the 
memory  is  due  to  the  greater  poet  who  wrote  about 
him. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 


HE  authors  of  Boston  seem  to  have 
been,  in  an  altogether  pleasant 
sense,  nomads,  even  though  they 
kept  their  nomadic  activities  within 
a  very  limited  district.  Although 
there  is  little  in  the  life  of  Boston 
authors  which  in  the  ordinary  sense 
could  be  termed  moving,  as  they 
were  a  happy,  fortunate,  conven- 
tional folk,  their  lives  were  certainly  moving  in  an- 
other sense,  for  moving  is  what  they  spent  a  great 
deal  of  time  in  doing.  Three  homes  for  Aldrich,  at 
least  three  for  Holmes — four,  counting  the  beautiful 
early  home  now  gone,  in  Cambridge,  and  five  if  the 
Berkshire  home  should  be  included ;  several  different 
homes  in  Boston  for  the  Alcotts,  who  even  had  three 
homes  out  in  Concord  between  times ;  various  homes 
for  Parsons  and  for  Palfrey,  three  for  Motley,  two  for 
Parkman — thus  the  list  goes  on,  and  Prescott  is  al- 
most the  only  one  I  think  of  who  did  not  go  moving 
about,  and  probably  even  he  did  some  moving  that  I 
have  never  heard  of.  Even  Mrs.  Deland,  Bostonian 
by  adoption,  has  so  readily  adapted  herself  to  Bos- 

49 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ton's  literary  way  as  already  to  have  lived  in  at  least 
three  different  Boston  homes.  It  all  reminds  me  of  a 
most  interesting  little  place  that  I  came  across  in 
Europe,  Neutral  Moresnet,  where  the  inhabitants 
make  it  almost  a  point  of  honor  and  certainly  a  point 
of  duty  to  change  their  houses  once  a  year. 

On  Walnut  Street,  facing  down  Chestnut,  was  the 
boyhood  home  of  Motley,  the  historian,  a  house  that 
has  since  been  torn  down;  the  best  part  of  his  life 
was  spent  in  Europe,  but  he  also  loved  his  Boston, 
and  a  Chestnut  Street  house  is  pointed  out,  at  16,  with 
a  brass-knockered,  brass-handled  door,  with  a  wonder- 
ful fanlight,  designed  in  flowing  lines,  as  a  place  where 
he  lived  for  a  time. 

Chestnut  Street  is  a  neighborhood  of  very  felicitous 
doorways  and  at  13,  well  up  the  slope  of  the  street, 
is  a  charming  house  that  was  long  ago  one  of  the 
several  successional  homes  of  Julia  Ward  Howe.  It 
has  an  unusually  striking  doorway,  with  four  slim, 
prim  white  pillars,  and  is  an  individual  sort  of  house 
as  if  to  befit  the  strikingly  individual  woman  who  lived 
here.  No  one  else,  surely,  in  all  literary  history  ever 
won  acknowledged  literary  leadership  through  a  long 
life  by  one  single  song  plus  personality !  Mrs.  Howe 
died  a  few  years  ago,  but  when  Henry  James  came 
over  to  take  his  final  look  at  this  country  to  see  that 
it  really  wasn't  worth  while  and  to  shake  its  dust 
forever  from  his  feet,  she  was  still  alive,  and  the  two 
met  at  a  reception,  and  a  story  was  told  me,  by  one 
who  heard  and  witnessed  the  scene,  of  what  took  place 
at  their  meeting.    Mrs.  Howe  had  known  him  from 

50 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

his  boyhood  and  he  at  once  began  to  tell  her  with  effu- 
sion of  how  he  had  thought  and  thought  of  her,  so 
much  and  so  often,  while  away,  and  of  what  a  precious 
delight  it  now  was  to  meet  her  again.  But  she  must 
have  had  some  doubt  of  his  entire  sincerity  for,  look- 
ing over  her  spectacles  at  him  as  she  used  to  do  when 
he  was  a  boy,  and  speaking  to  him  as  if  he  were  still 
a  little  boy,  she  melted  his  sugary  pleasantries  by  say- 
ing, with  gentle  and  very  slow  admonition  and  with 
an  accented  "me,"  "Don't  lie  to  me,  Henry." 

Far  down  at  50  Chestnut  Street,  in  a  section  where 
the  typical  houses  have  three-part  windows  as  the 
main  windows  in  their  front,  is  the  house  where  the 
historian  Parkman  lived  and  worked  for  twenty  years. 
It  is  a  house  with  exceedingly  tall  chimneys  and  a 
door  deeply  recessed  within  an  arch,  and  is  almost  di- 
rectly through  from  the  house  of  the  historian  Prescott 
on  the  next  street  parallel,  Beacon  Street.  And  noth- 
ing could  be  more  strange,  than  that  both  of  these 
historians,  whose  homes  were  so  near  together,  were 
so  grievously  troubled  with  their  eyesight  as  to  need 
specially  made  appliances,  a  sort  of  machine  or  frame, 
to  enable  them  to  read  and  write  at  all ;  each  gave  a 
superb  example  of  working  under  almost  insuperably 
depressing  difficulties;  and  that  they  were  both  his- 
torians, both  Americans,  both  of  them  dwellers  on 
Beacon  Hill  for  many  years  adds  to  the  strangeness 
of  it. 

Out  in  front  of  the  State  House,  at  the  corner  of 
Beacon  Street  and  Park  Street,  stood  the  beautiful 
home  of  the  man  who  used  so  to  represent  Boston  in 

51 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  public  eye  that  it  was  playfully  suggested  that  the 
city  be  called  Ticknorville.  Here  stood  the  home  of 
George  Ticknor.  In  a  sense,  the  house  still  stands 
here,  but  it  has  been  so  altered  in  fitting  it  up  for 
business  and  offices,  for  antique  dealers  and  deco- 
rators and  lawyers,  that  one's  first  impression  is  that 
it  has  quite  vanished  and  that  another  building  stands 
in  its  place.  But  even  yet  one-half  of  the  distin- 
guished horseshoe  stair  still  remains,  leading  up  to 
the  front  door,  and  although  the  fine  original  door 
has  been  replaced  by  a  window,  part  of  the  old  portico 
is  still  in  place,  surmounted  by  some  exquisite  old 
ironwork  which  is  among  the  very  finest  bits  of  old 
ironwork  in  Boston.  The  marble  hall  of  which  Haw- 
thorne writes  and  in  which  so  many  distinguished 
visitors  were  received,  has  gone,  and  the  stairs  have 
been  altered  and  new-banistered,  and  it  is  now  hard 
to  imagine  the  old-time  glory  of  the  place,  although 
the  great  height  of  the  ceilings  gives  an  impression  of 
spaciousness  and  dignity. 

For  many  years  Ticknor  lived  here,  pleasantly 
varying  his  life  with  lengthy  trips  to  Europe  for 
travel  and  study.  He  had  married  the  daughter  of 
an  extremely  wealthy  merchant,  and  this  made  life 
sufficiently  easy  for  him  to  spend  years  and  years  in 
producing  an  agreeable  and  scholarly  history  of 
Spanish  literature.  Even  yet,  a  Bostonian  writing 
or  speaking  of  the  old  house  and  its  old-time  glory,  is 
likely  to  refer  to  it  as  "her"  house,  and  to  mention 
"her"  hospitality  and  even,  incredible  though  it 
seems,  "her"  library!    Ticknor  must  have  been  a 

52 


DOORWAY    OF    PRESCOTT's    HOME    ON    BEACON    STREET 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

most  likable  man,  for  so  many  likable  men  liked  him  so 
very  much  indeed,  and  he  was  deemed  an  immensely 
distinguished  man,  yet  he  stands  as  a  striking  ex- 
ample of  great  fame  in  one  generation  and  practical 
oblivion  in  the  next. 

And  how  impressively  all  of  those  old-time  Amer- 
ican writers  loomed !  And  how  neglected  are  most  of 
their  works  to-day!  And  yet  individual  remem- 
brance or  forgetfulness  is  not  the  only  test.  As  a 
class,  or  group,  they  brilliantly  made  the  beginnings 
of  our  national  literature,  they  showed  that  American 
writers  could  mark  out  paths  of  beauty  and  learning, 
they  made  it  clear  that  American  writers  could  be 
men  of  imagination  and  poetical  power.  That  most 
of  them  are  now  unread  is  neither  discredit  nor  criti- 
cism. In  England  there  has  been  the  same  forget- 
ting of  men  once  famous,  for  of  the  English  authors 
of  the  past  only  a  few  of  the  preeminent  are  read,  and 
the  many  others  who  meant  so  very,  very  much  in 
their  day,  are  but  names  and  vague  memories.  But 
that  does  not  mean,  either  in  England  or  in  America, 
that  the  now  forgotten  writers  of  the  past  were  not 
excellent  and  noteworthy  writers,  for  numbers  of 
them  were  very  excellent  and  noteworthy  indeed,  and 
their  combined  influence  is  a  powerful  and  still-con- 
tinuing force. 

It  is  pleasant  to  realize  that  this  old  section  is  not- 
able for  its  connection  with  other  art  as  well  as  that 
of  literature;  in  its  architecture  it  is  agreeably  dis- 
tinguished, and  it  has  a  pleasant  association  with  the 
best  paintings,  for  I  remember  that  in  looking  over  a 

53 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

list  of  those  who,  a  few  years  ago,  were  the  owners 
of  Gilbert  Stuart's  works,  I  noticed  that  quite  a  pro- 
portion were  still  in  the  possession  of  residents  of 
Beacon  Hill ;  which  is  just  as  it  ought  to  be. 

Not  only  is  the  entire  hill,  regarding  it  as  a  whole, 
a  highly  successful  example  of  domestic  architecture, 
whether  the  houses  are  considered  singly  or  in  mass, 
but  there  are  individual  houses  notably  worthy  of  at- 
tention. For  example,  at  85  Mount  Vernon  Street, 
is  an  especially  attractive  Bulfinch  house  of  a  design 
not  usual  with  that  unusual  man,  and  he  built  it  thus 
differently  in  order  to  match  an  unusually  broad  front- 
age of  building  space  and  to  harmonize  with  an  un- 
usual depth  of  long  and  high  retaining  wall  in  front. 
It  is  a  big  square-fronted  house,  one  of  the  largest 
homes  of  the  entire  neighborhood,  with  its  entrance 
door  not  on  the  front  of  the  house  at  all  but  on  one 
side,  and  with  its  front  beautifully  balanced  with  over- 
arched windows,  with  separate  little  balconies,  with 
Corinthian  pilasters;  and  it  has  a  great  octagonal 
lantern  on  the  roof.  In  addition  to  all  else  of  dignity 
and  fineness  there  is  the  excellent  feature  of  continu- 
ing back  to  the  wall  of  the  courtyard,  completing  a 
design  that  is  architecturally  an  adjunct.  But  the 
house  is  now  all  gray,  in  one  dull  monotone,  and  it  is 
really  necessary  to  picture  it  in  the  beauty  of  its 
original  design  of  red  brick  and  white  pilasters  and 
black  iron  to  see  it  as  it  ought  to  be  seen. 

Of  all  the  writers  who  by  their  combined  influence 
gave  the  Boston  of  the  past  its  high  literary  distinc- 
tion  none   was   so   important   as    Oliver   Wendell 

54 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

Holmes.  Not  that  he  need  necessarily  be  considered 
the  greatest  among  them,  although  in  his  particular 
line  he  was  supreme,  but  that  he  so  stood  for  Boston, 
so  represented  Boston,  so  interpreted  Boston,  so 
gave  the  city  definite  form  out  of  vaguely  general 
imaginings,  so  placed  it  before  the  world,  as  to  make 
himself  its  definite  exemplar. 

Boston  is  the  City  of  Holmes,  and  he  himself  was 
Boston  epitomized.  He  was  in  himself  a  human 
abridgment  of  Boston,  an  abstract  of  the  city  that  he 
so  loved.  He  was  the  best  of  Boston  concentrated 
into  one  human  form,  and  he  was  a  writer  of  whom 
any  city  in  the  world  might  be  proud.  To  read  his 
"Autocrat"  is  an  intellectual  aesthetic  delight.  Sel- 
dom has  there  been  a  man  so  clearsighted,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  cleverly  able  to  put  his  clearsightedness 
into  such  delightful  literary  form.  Montaigne  would 
have  loved  him.  Lamb,  who  died  when  the  career  of 
Holmes  was  just  beginning,  would  have  called  him 
brother. 

Over  in  King's  Chapel,  where  Holmes  had  a  pew 
in  the  gallery  during  most  of  his  long  life,  there  is  a 
tablet  to  his  memory.  He  is  not  buried  there,  but 
his  friends  very  properly  wished  him  to  be  commemo- 
rated in  that  old-time  building  of  Boston;  only,  the 
tablet  is  really  entertaining,  although  that  is  the  last 
word  that  would  usually  be  thought  of  in  regard  to  any 
cenotaph,  for  it  begins  its  description  of  Holmes  with 
the  words  "Teacher  of  Anatomy,' '  letting  "Essayist 
and  Poet"  follow! 

Curious,  you  see,  the  order  of  precedence.    No  ad- 

55 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

mirer  of  Holmes,  outside  of  Boston,  would  ever  have 
thought  of  his  fame  as  an  essayist  being  second  to 
anything  else,  least  of  all  as  being  second  to  his  fame 
as  an  anatomical  teacher.  He  was,  doubtless,  an  ex- 
cellent surgeon,  and  being  of  an  original  bent  of  mind 
he  put  his  originality  into  all  he  did,  and  long  ago 
some  of  his  surgical  or  medical  opinions  led  some  one 
of  the  Teutonic  name  of  Neidhard  to  write  a  book  at- 
tacking them,  and  another  controversial  anti-Holmes 
book  came  from  the  equally  Teutonic-named  Wes- 
selhoeft,  but  these  men  and  their  books  are  them- 
selves no  more  forgotten  than  is  the  fame  of  Holmes 
himself  as  a  surgeon. 

And  yet,  at  a  dinner  in  honor  of  Holmes,  on  his 
seventieth  birthday,  when  friends  and  admirers  gath- 
ered from  various  cities,  President  Eliot  of  Harvard 
arose,  after  there  had  been  general  felicitation  of 
Holmes  as  a  man  of  letters,  and  said :  "It  seems  to  me 
my  duty  to  remind  all  these  poets,  essayists  and  story- 
tellers that  the  main  work  of  our  friend's  life  has 
been  of  an  altogether  different  nature.  I  know  him 
as  the  professor  of  anatomy  and  physiology  at  Har- 
vard for  the  last  thirty-two  years.  You  think  it  is 
the  pen  with  which  Doctor  Holmes  is  chiefly  skillful. 
I  assure  you  he  is  equally  skillful  with  the  scalpel.' ' 

That  is  delightfully  remindful  of  the  meeting  of 
Voltaire  and  Congreve,  when  Voltaire  expressed  his 
pleasure  at  meeting  so  distinguished  a  literary  man, 
and  Congreve  stiffly  replied  that  it  was  not  as  a  liter- 
ary man  but  as  a  gentleman  that  he  wished  to  be  con- 
sidered, whereupon  Voltaire  promptly  replied  that  he 

56 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

did  not  need  to  come  so  far  to  find  a  gentleman. 
Holmes  must  have  thought  of  that,  though  as  guest 
of  honor  he  could  not  speak  of  it!  He  knew  per- 
fectly well  that  these  admirers  had  not  come  there  to 
find  a  surgeon.  And  he  must  have  remembered,  with 
glee  that  was  tempered  with  chagrin,  that  although 
Harvard  had  long  honored  him  as  an  M.D.,  Boston  in 
general  had  refused  to  take  him  seriously,  as  a  doc- 
tor, after  he  had  jokingly  let  it  be  known  that  "fevers 
would  be  thankfully  received." 

Of  all  Boston  writers  it  would  be  expected  that 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  would  choose  the  finest  and 
most  attractive  house  to  live  in,  and  this  not  alone 
because  of  his  being  a  man  of  such  ability  but  be- 
cause he  so  loved  the  fine  things  connected  with  the 
fine  old  times,  and  because  his  own  life  began  in  a 
house  that  was  a  most  charming  example  of  old  archi- 
tecture. I  well  remember  the  house  where  he  was 
born ;  it  was  over  in  old  Cambridge,  close  to  the  Com- 
mon, but  it  has  been  destroyed  for  some  reason,  and 
the  spot  stands  empty;  I  well  remember  what  a  fine 
old  pre-Bevolutionary  house  it  was,  picturesque  in 
the  highest  degree,  the  kind  of  house  that  delights  the 
imagination,  low-set,  homelike,  yellow  and  gambrel- 
roofed;  but  he  has  written  of  it  himself: 

"Born  in  a  house  with  a  gambrel-roof, — 
Standing  still,  if  you  must  have  proof. — 
'Gambrel? — Gambrel?' —    Let  me  beg 
You'll  look  at  a  horse's  hinder  leg, — 
First  great  angle  above  the  hoof, — 
That's  the  gambrel;  hence  gambrel-roof.' • 

57 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

The  ideals  of  Holmes  were  all  of  the  olden-time. 
He  stood,  as  he  frankly  said,  for  the  man  who  could 
show  family  portraits  rather  than  twenty-five  cent 
daguerreotypes,  for  the  man  who  inherits  family 
traditions  and  the  cumulative  humanities  of  at  least 
four  or  five  generations ;  and  among  these  cumulative 
humanities  one  would  have  expected  Holmes,  of  all 
men,  to  rank  high  the  possession  of  an  old-time  house, 
rich  in  the  feelings  and  traditions  of  the  past.  But 
after  living  through  his  early  years  in  a  house  that 
was  a  thing  of  beauty,  Holmes  did  not  find  it  a  joy 
forever  to  continue  to  live  in  a  fine  house,  but  chose 
instead  to  live  in  commonplace  houses!  Nor,  after 
writing  as  he  did  of  the  striking  down  of  thousands  of 
roots  into  one 's  own  home,  did  he  settle  down  in  any 
one  house  for  a  lifetime!  The  trouble  was  that,  all 
unconsciously,  he  was  in  this  regard  not  living  up 
to  his  own  ideals.  His  ideals  led  him  toward  the  old 
and  beautiful,  the  things  connected  with  ancestry  and 
the  past;  but  with  old  houses  it  seems  to  have  been 
with  him  as  it  was  with  old  furniture ;  he  writes  apolo- 
getically, somewhere  or  other,  of  loving  old-time  fur- 
niture but  of  keeping  it  practically  hidden  in  some 
out-of-the-way  room,  and  he  seems  to  have  felt  the 
same  perverse  desire  to  keep  from  showing  any  out- 
ward love  for  old  houses.  He  chose  a  home  for  him- 
self, not  even  on  Beacon  Hill,  although  close  beside 
it;  he  chose  to  live  in  Bosworth  Street,  then  called 
Montgomery  Place,  a  court  leading  off  Tremont 
Street  opposite  the  Old  Granary  Burying  Ground,  and 
ending  in  a  few  stone  steps,  arched  with  a  wrought- 

58 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

iron  design,  leading  down  to  an  alley  which  borders 
where  once  stood  the  ancient  Province  House  and 
where  antiquarians  still  point  out  what  they  say  is 
a  fragment  of  the  Province  House  foundation  wall. 
All  this  region  was  long  ago  given  up  to  business,  but 
where  Holmes  lived  is  still  pointed  out  at  the  farthest 
left-hand,  next  to  the  corner  of  the  court,  and  it  was 
never  an  attractive  place,  and  the  next  door  house, 
still  standing,  is  positively  commonplace.  Still,  with 
a  curious  perversity,  he  lived  here  for  almost  twenty 
years,  and  here  wrote  almost  all  of  his  remarkable 
" Autocrat.' '  It  was  a  well-to-do  neighborhood,  and 
perhaps  even  wealthy,  but  it  missed  being  distin- 
guished. 

But  Holmes  finally  tired  of  the  house  and  died  out 
of  it.  I  use  his  own  words  to  express  his  moving 
away  from  it :  for,  as  he  writes,  after  referring  to  his 
having  lived  in  this  very  house  for  years  and  years, 
and  then  leaving  it,  people  die  out  of  their  houses 
just  as  they  die  out  of  their  bodies.  He  and  his  fam- 
ily, he  narrates,  had  no  great  sorrows  or  troubles 
there,  such  as  came  to  their  neighbors,  but  on  the 
whole  had  a  pleasant  time,  but  "Men  sicken  of  houses 
until  at  last  they  quit  them,"  as  he  goes  on  to  say. 

Whereupon  one  feels  sure  that  this  splendid  Auto- 
crat would  surely,  the  next  time,  choose  a  home  in 
which  he  could  feel  pride.  But,  no !  He  went  to  the 
Charles  Street  house,  which  was  a  house  as  common- 
place as  the  one  he  left.  Here,  however,  he  had  the 
water  immediately  behind  the  house,  with  its  sunset 
glows  and  the  distant  hills.    Still  restless,  he  moved 

59 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

again,  and  this  last  time  to  the  house  in  which  at  a 
mellow  age  he  died,  at  296  Beacon  Street:  not  the 
Beacon  Hill  district,  but  in  the  Back  Bay  extension 
of  Beacon  Street.  Again  he  had  chosen  a  house  with 
back-view  on  the  waterfront,  but,  still  perverse  on  this 
subject  of  homes,  he  had  again  chosen  an  undis- 
tinguished home  and  undistinguished  environment,  al- 
though it  was  a  house  and  a  neighborhood  of  well-to-do 
but  monotonous  comfort. 

One  naturally  wonders  whether,  had  he  chosen  a 
home  more  fitting  to  his  ideals,  he  would  not  have 
left  behind  him  more  than  the  single  superlative  book 
he  did  leave.  But  as  that  single  book  is  really  in  the 
very  first  class,  of  its  kind,  perhaps  it  was  all  for 
the  best,  after  all. 

One  likes  to  think,  and  I  am  sure  it  is  more  than  a 
mere  fancy,  that  the  influence  of  that  beautiful  house 
in  Cambridge,  the  birthplace  of  Holmes,  extended  in 
at  least  a  considerable  degree  over  his  entire  life,  and 
it  assuredly  had  much  to  do  with  making  him  a  finely 
patriotic  man,  devoted  to  the  best  Americanism. 
For  there  was  much  more  to  that  house  than  age  and 
gambrel-roof  and  beauty;  there  was  association  with 
the  most  heroic  deeds  of  our  American  past ;  for  that 
very  house  was  headquarters  of  the  Committee  of 
Safety,  and  the  American  soldiers  who  were  to  fight 
at  Bunker  Hill  lined  up  in  front  of  that  very  house 
before  making  their  night  march  to  the  battlefield, 
and  stood  with  bared  heads  while  the  President  of 
Harvard  College,  standing  on  the  front  steps  of  the 
house,  prayed  for  the  success  of  the  American  arms. 

60 


THE  CITY  OF  HOLMES 

Those  associations  thrilled  Holmes  throughout  his 
life,  for  even  in  the  house  where  he  died,  far  down 
among  the  houses  of  the  Back  Bay,  one  likes  to  re- 
member that,  looking  from  his  windows,  the  thing 
which  most  of  all  impressed  him  was  (a  fact  of  Bos- 
ton geography  surprising  even  to  many  a  well-in- 
formed Bostonian)  that  from  those  windows  he  was 
able  to  see  Bunker  Hill  Monument. 


\ji 


& 


.%  •;-*> 


WW'ir    - 


CHAPTEE  VI 


A  HOUSE   SET   ON   A   HILL 


S^i«g$ 


T  was  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  who 
remarked  that  the  Boston  State 
House  is  the  hub  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem, and  that  you  could  not  pry  that 
out  of  a  Boston  man  if  you  had  the 
tire  of  all  creation  straightened  out 
for  a  crowbar.  And  that  is  really 
the  standpoint  of  Bostonians, 
Nothing  else  can  possibly  be  so  im- 
portant as  is  Boston;  and,  to  the 
Bostonian,  his  city  seems  to  be  represented  by  the 
State  House.  There  is  excellent  ancient  authority 
for  the  statement  that  a  house  set  upon  a  hill  cannot 
be  hid,  but  even  without  this  ancient  authority  there 
would  be  no  disputing  the  fact  that  the  State  House, 
set  as  it  is  upon  Beacon  Hill,  is  not  hid,  for  its  gold 
dome,  which  used  to  offer  a  glory  of  literal  gold  leaf 
but  is  now  not  quite  so  striking  in  its  more  recent 
covering  of  a  kind  of  gold  paint,  is  visible  not  only 
to  all  Boston  but  to  many  and  many  a  town  and  vil- 
lage beyond  the  limits  of  the  city. 

And  somehow,  when  I  look  at  this  great  dome,  on 
its  height,  in  Boston  of  New  England,  visible  over 
miles  and  miles  of  the  surrounding  country  and  far 

62 


A  HOUSE  SET  ON  A  HILL 

out  over  the  water,  I  think  of  another  Boston,  a  Bos- 
ton in  Old  England,  with  its  splendid  tower  rising 
far  into  the  air  and  visible  for  many,  many  miles 
across  land  and  sea  alike.  And  the  name  of  this 
American  Boston  came  straight  from  that  English 
Boston,  and  hundreds  of  the  English  Boston  people 
were  the  first  of  the  settlers  of  this  American  Boston, 
driving  out,  as  they  did,  by  their  presence,  friendly 
though  it  was,  the  hermit  Blaxton  whom  they  found 
established  here  before  them,  with  his  thatched-roofed 
cottage  and  his  little  rose  garden  and  his  spring  on 
what  was  long  afterwards  to  become  Louisburg 
Square.  What  an  interesting  life  story  Blaxton's 
must  have  been !  How  it  tantalizes  the  imagination ! 
And  yet,  as  to  so  much  of  the  romantic  in  New  Eng- 
land, the  New  England  mind  is  rather  cold  toward 
him,  as  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  no  less  a  man  than 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  who,  after  telling  of  the  mystery 
of  Blaxton  and  of  the  little  that  was  ever  known  of 
him,  except — and  what  an  except! — that  he  was  a 
Cambridge  man  who  exiled  himself,  with  his  library, 
to  the  absolutely  unbroken  wilderness  and  mar- 
velously  made  a  charming  home  here,  with  his  flowers 
and  books,  in  the  early  1620  's,  goes  on  to  add,  Boston- 
like, that  although  all  this  seems  dimly  mysterious 
and  excites  curiosity,  the  story  would  "no  doubt 
prove  commonplace  enough' '  if  we  could  know  more 
about  it ! 

I  have  often  thought,  when  looking  at  the  dome  on 
Beacon  Hill,  that  the  early  settlers,  looking  at  the 
early  beacon  that,  on  the  then  much  higher  hill,  long 

63 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

preceded  the  State  House  here,  must  have  been 
strongly  reminded  of  their  church-tower  beacon  of 
St.  Botolph's  at  home,  and  that  they  would  have  been 
intensely  pleased  could  they  have  known  that  this 
great  dome  was  to  stand  here,  and  that,  every  night, 
it  was  to  be  a  beacon  superbly  glowing  with  great 
rings  of  light  that  shine  far  out  over  the  countryside. 
And  remembering  that  English  Boston,  with  its 
splendid,  tall,  truncated  tower,  that  was  in  times  of 
danger  a  beacon  tower,  and  its  veritable  tide-water 
Back  Bay  (even  though  it  may  not  have  been  given 
that  name),  and  its  comfortable  old  homes,  and  its 
air  of  centuries  of  solid  comfort  and  prosperity,  and 
its  wonderful  great  open  market  still  existing  and 
probably  looking  much  as  it  did  three  centuries  ago 
(no  wonder  the  American  Bostonians,  remembering 
that  market-place  in  England,  promptly  established 
an  open  market  here!),  the  thought  comes,  of  what 
ease  and  happiness  and  comfort  and  fine  living  were 
sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  coming  to  America ;  for  the 
Boston  Puritans  did  not,  as  was  the  case  with  the 
Plymouth  Pilgrims,  come  here  from  exile  but  from 
their  native  country  and  their  comfortable  homes. 
And  yet  there  was  another  factor,  after  all ;  for  they 
still  show,  in  the  English  Boston,  the  gloomy  prison 
where  were  held  in  confinement,  for  mere  matters  of 
opinion,  some  of  the  very  ones  who  on  their  release 
planned  the  migration  to  America  and  freedom.  Those 
men  deemed  freedom  in  a  wilderness  preferable  to 
the  chance  of  further  imprisonment  even  in  a  charm- 
ing old  town,  and  preferable  to  living  where  their 

64 


A  HOUSE  SET  ON  A  HILL 

minds,  even  if  not  their  bodies,  would  be  held  in 
bondage.  It  is  no  wonder  that  America,  settled  in 
great  degree,  both  Northern  and  Southern  colonies 
alike,  with  people  who  came  seeking  freedom  from 
one  or  another  kind  of  duress,  developed  from  the 
very  first  an  intense  movement  toward  permanent 
liberty  on  this  side  of  the  ocean;  instead  of  being  mat- 
ter of  surprise  that  our  Eevolution  came,  it  would 
have  been  surprising,  considering  all  this,  if  it  had 
not  come. 

That  Boston  possesses  its  hub  of  the  universe,  its 
State  House,  is  because,  alone  among  the  great  cities 
of  the  country,  it  is  not  only  a  great  city  but  the 
capital  of  a  great  State.  One  wonders  just  what 
would  have  been  deemed  the  hub  if  it  had  not  had  its 
domed  building  set  up  here  so  prominently.  No  Bos- 
tonian  ever  thinks  of  it  as  the  Massachusetts  State 
House,  but  always  as  the  Boston  State  House.  Bos- 
ton, the  capital  of  early  days,  was  wise  enough  to 
retain  the  distinction  when  it  grew  large.  New  York 
was  the  capital  of  its  State  and  for  a  time  was  even 
the  national  capital;  Philadelphia  was  the  capital  of 
Pennsylvania  and,  like  New  York,  was  for  a  number 
of  years  the  national  capital ;  but  both  these  cities  not 
only  lost  their  headship  of  the  nation  but  also  re- 
linquished such  leadership  of  their  own  States  as 
comes  from  being  the  political  center.  But  Boston, 
once  given  the  distinction  of  being  the  seat  of  gov- 
ernment of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts, 
continued  to  hold  it,  thus  adding  greatly  to  its  im- 
portance and  consequence  as  a  city — and  thus  secur- 

65 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ing  its  most  striking  architectural  ornament,  the  State 
House,  the  most  beautiful  feature  of  which  is  known, 
from  the  name  of  the  architect,  as  the  u  Bulfinch 
front."  Originally,  however,  it  was  a  front  of  brick 
with  pillars  of  white,  and  originally  the  dome  was 
covered  with  plates  of  copper,  rolled  and  made  by 
Paul  Severe,  but  Bevere's  copper  has  had  many  a 
patch  and  replacement  and  the  entire  front  of  the 
building  itself,  below  the  dome,  has  been  painted;  it 
was  for  many  years  painted  yellow,  but  is  now  white. 

This  high-set  building,  on  its  high  elevation,  un- 
doubtedly had  its  inspiration  from  some  Greek  tem- 
ple on  a  hill.  Bulfinch,  like  the  great  English  con- 
temporary architects  whom  he  so  much  resembled,  the 
Adams,  gained  his  knowledge  of  beauty  from  an  in- 
tense and  loving  study  of  the  Greek  in  books  and 
in  travel  in  Europe. 

The  building  has  all  the  advantage  of  a  noble  posi- 
tion of  which  noble  use  has  been  made.  Its  superb 
colonnade  of  pillars  is  symmetrically  so  spaced,  with 
four  pillars  singly  in  the  middle  and  four  in  doubles 
at  either  end,  as  to  obtain  the  most  admirable  effect ; 
the  effectiveness  of  thus  using  double  pillars  on  the 
front  of  a  building  instead  of  single-spaced  pillars 
only,  being  strangely  overlooked  by  most  architects. 
This  noble  colonnade  is  surmounted  by  a  temple-like 
pediment  over  which  rises  the  great  dome,  and  below 
the  colonnade  is  an  admirable  row  of  arched  openings 
from  which  the  steps  sweep  down  to  a  broad  grassy 
space  which  stretches  off  toward  a  terrace  above  the 
Beacon  Street  sidewalk  and  thus  toward  the  trees 

66 


r  OC«« 


A  HOUSE  SET  ON  A  HILL 

and  grass  of  the  Common,  the  iron  archway  at  the 
sidewalk  being  a  most  effective  bit,  in  its  Greek  detail. 

The  work  of  Bulfinch  is  the  more  notable  because 
there  was  no  model  anywhere  of  precisely  the  kind 
of  public  building  which  he  wished  to  build.  No  leg- 
islative hall  existed  such  as  indicated  the  general  idea 
of  republicanism.  France  was  exchanging  its  kingly 
government  for  the  rule  of  the  people,  but  the  theater 
at  Versailles  and  the  tennis-court  satisfied  the  peo- 
ple's representatives.  Meanwhile,  in  England,  the 
House  of  Commons  was  quite  content  with  the  mag- 
nificent Saint  Stephen's  at  Westminster.  But  Bul- 
finch was  a  big  man,  an  individual  man,  who  not  only 
utilized  the  best  he  saw  but  who  worked  along  lines 
of  his  own  originality.  And  that  he  was  not  only 
original  but  successful  is  shown  not  only  by  the  fact 
that  one  State  after  another  copied  his  general  model 
but  by  the  fact  that  he  personally  was  chosen  to  com- 
plete the  design  and  the  building  of  the  capitol  at 
Washington — the  entire  world  knows  with  what  su- 
preme success. 

The  Boston  State  House  is  a  distinctly  American 
building,  and  everywhere  within  it  there  is  a  general 
air  and  atmosphere  of  courtesy  towards  strangers, 
and  a  readiness  to  show  anything  of  interest,  not  only 
without  the  desire  for  tips  but  without  the  possibility 
of  giving  them.  And  not  only  has  the  American  Bul- 
finch front  been  preserved,  but  also  the  original  Bul- 
finch interiors. 

Here,  with  its  windows  looking  out  over  the  Com- 
mon, is  the  original  Senate  Chamber,  with  its  fine 

67 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

barrel-roof  ornamented  with  classic  ornaments  on 
the  rectangular  spaces  of  the  ceiling.  It  is  a  small- 
galleried  room  with  an  air  of  quiet  perfection. 

The  beautiful  room  in  the  very  center  of  the  old 
front  is  the  original  Hall  of  the  Eepresentatives. 
When  built,  this  hall  was  large  enough  to  hold  only 
chairs  without  any  desks,  as  there  used  to  be  so  many 
members  in  proportion  to  the  population  of  the  State 
that  the  meetings  were  almost  State  meetings !  It  is 
a  large  room,  made  octagonal  by  four  niched  corners ; 
these  corners,  now  niches,  having  once  held  fireplaces 
where  cordwood  blazed  cheerily  for  the  very  practical 
work  of  heating  this  great  apartment.  In  addition 
to  a  large  candelabrum  hanging  from  the  center  of 
the  ceiling,  which  was  a  candelabrum  in  fact,  to  be 
used  for  candles  only,  each  member  needed  to  have 
a  candle  at  his  own  seat  for  use  in  the  early  darkness 
of  winter  afternoons,  and  each  member  was  expected 
to  buy  his  own  candles  for  his  own  personal  use;  a 
state  of  affairs  that  would  positively  appall  any  pub- 
lic servant  of  to-day. 

The  walls  are  of  white  pine,  cut  and  painted  to 
represent  even-set  blocks  of  marble,  and  there  are 
felicitous  balustraded  galleries  for  the  use  of  the  pub- 
lic. The  ceiling  is  domed  above  this  entire  room,  but 
the  dome  is  a  long  distance  beneath  the  gold  dome  that 
tops  the  building,  and  is  not  its  inner  surface,  as  one 
might  at  first  suppose  on  looking  up  from  this  floor. 

These  old  rooms  are  all  in  white,  which  admirably 
brings  out  the  lovely  classic  perfection  of  detail,  and 
there  is  beautiful  relief  given  by  a  various  use  of 

68 


A  HOUSE  SET  ON  A  HILL 

blue  and  buff  in  certain  places  and  by  the  high-placed 
windows,  rayed  and  oval.  The  great  coat-of-arms, 
the  old  clock,  the  speaker's  seat,  the  corridor  along 
the  front  behind  the  pillars,  each  is  an  achievement 
in  design  and  dignity. 

In  these  two  old  meeting-halls  are  preserved  relics 
which,  though  few  in  number,  are  of  profound  in- 
terest. Here  on  the  wall  is  an  old  musket;  not  a 
remarkable  musket  in  itself,  one  would  say,  but  just 
one  of  the  old-fashioned  flintlocks;  but  it  is  really 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  muskets  of  history,  for 
it  was  not  only  captured  in  the  running  pursuit  from 
Concord,  but  was  the  very  first  gun  to  be  captured 
from  the  British  in  the  war  of  the  Eevolution.  Here, 
too,  is  the  musket  that  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the 
world,  for  it  is  the  very  musket  used  by  Major  John 
Buttrick,  who  commanded  the  embattled  farmers  at 
their  stand  at  the  bridge  in  Concord.  Here,  too,  is  a 
drum  which  rattled  through  the  sound  of  the  rifles 
on  Bunker  Hill.  The  intent  has  been  to  give  place 
only  to  relics  of  special  distinction. 

In  the  new  part  of  the  building  there  is  a  rounding 
room  of  yellow  marble,  richly  ornate,  which  is  a 
veritable  shrine  for  Americans,  for  it  nobly  displays 
three  hundred  battle  flags  that  were  carried  by  Mass- 
achusetts soldiers  in  the  War  of  the  Eebellion. 

Also,  in  the  new  part  of  the  building  is  the  State 
Library,  where  is  preserved  the  invaluable  Bradford 
history,  the  story  of  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims,  written 
by  Governor  Bradford  himself.  It  is  necessarily 
under  glass,  and  is  kept  opened  at  one  of  the  yel- 

69 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

lowed  old  pages,  where,  in  plain  old-fashioned  hand- 
writing, still  perfectly  legible  to-day,  it  is  set  down 
that  "Haveing  undertaken  for  ye  glorie  of  god  and 
advancements  of  ye  Christian  faith  and  honour  of 
our  king  &  countrie,  a  voyage  to  plant  ye  first  colonie 
in  ye  northerne  parts  of  Virginia,' '  the  company  are 
about  to  frame  certain  laws  and  ordinances  which  he 
goes  on  to  enumerate.  The  invaluable  manuscript 
is  carefully  put  into  a  fireproof  safe  at  the  close  of 
every  day.  It  is  remarkable  for  the  number  of  words 
on  each  page,  for  the  average  seems  to  be  about  four 
hundred.  If  any  visitor  wishes  to  read  more  than 
the  single  page  which  is  shown  him  under  glass,  he  is 
freely  offered,  for  perusal,  a  large  photographic  copy 
in  which  he  may,  if  he  so  desires,  read  every  page  as 
if  in  the  very  handwriting  of  the  old  governor. 

In  the  new  portion  of  the  building  are  seemingly 
endless  corridored  vistas,  with  a  permeative  impres- 
sion of  new  mahogany  desks  and  a  great  deal  of 
bronze  and  tawny  marble.  There  are  also  the  present- 
day  meeting  halls  of  Senators  and  Eepresentatives. 

In  the  new  Hall  of  the  Eepresentatives,  in  this  new 
part  of  the  building,  hangs  a  wooden  codfish  "as  a 
memorial  of  the  importance  of  the  Cod  Fishery  to  the 
welfare  of  this  Commonwealth,' '  as  the  phrasing  was 
of  the  resolution  which  ordered,  in  1784,  that  a  cod- 
fish be  suspended  "in  the  room  where  the  House 
sat."  That  was  in  the  old  State  House,  still  stand- 
ing down  town,  and  it  would  also  seem  that  the  custom 
was  older  than  that  particular  fish.  It  is  almost  cer- 
tain, too,  that  this  very  codfish  of  wood,  now  hanging 

70 


A  HOUSE  SET  ON  A  HILL 

in  the  new  room  of  the  Eepresentatives — their  sec- 
ond room  in  the  new  State  House — is  the  very  one 
which  was  suspended  in  the  room  in  the  old  State 
House  in  pursuance  of  the  resolution  of  1784,  for  in 
1895,  over  a  century  afterward,  it  was  ordered  that 
the  "removal  of  the  ancient  representation  of  a  cod- 
fish' '  from  the  old  hall  to  the  new  be  carried  out. 
Whereupon,  a  committee  of  fifteen  proceeded  to  the 
old  room  of  the  Eepresentatives,  and,  wrapping  the 
symbolic  wooden  cod  in  an  American  flag,  proudly 
bore  it  in  state  to  the  new  room,  which  would  seem 
to  be  the  third  room  for  this  sacred  codfish,  as  it  is 
commonly  called. 

But  except  for  the  codfish  and  the  Bradford  man- 
uscript, and  the  battle  flags,  it  is  the  older  part  of  the 
State  House  that  is  of  interest  to  the  visitor.  And 
there  is  more  than  the  old  meeting  halls  of  the  Sen- 
ate and  House  of  Eepresentatives.  There  is  still  the 
Governor's  room,  an  apartment  of  unusual  dignity, 
with  its  white  pilasters  and  cornices  and  windows  and 
fireplace,  all  curiously  and  perfectly  balanced.  I 
know  of  no  other  such  room,  precisely  like  this  in 
proportions,  for  it  is  an  exact  cube  in  its  dimensions 
of  length,  breadth  and  height.  And  it  is  a  success, 
in  that  it  looks  like  a  room  made  for  the  use  of  one 
man  rather  than  for  the  purposes  of  a  board  meeting 
or  an  assembly.  Also,  it  is  the  kind  of  room  which 
would  be  not  only  filled,  but  would  have  the  appear- 
ance of  being  really  furnished,  with  people  standing, 
as  at  a  governor's  reception.  Old-time  architects 
had  a  way  of  thinking  of  such  things  as  the  purpose 

71 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 


and  the  use,  not  only  of  houses  but  of  particular 
rooms,  and  this  is  one  great  reason  why  so  much  of 
the  work  they  did  is  called  by  us  moderns  felicitous. 

Eemembering  that  Bulfinch  excelled  in  stair  design, 
it  is  interesting  to  notice  the  wonderful  little  stair- 
cases in  the  old  part  of  the  building;  staircases  that 
are  lessons  in  good  taste,  as  is  also  the  grand  stair- 
case itself,  with  its  heavy  four-sided  balusters  and 
its  very  effective  mahogany  rail. 

The  entire  building,  as  originally  designed  by  Bul- 
finch and  built  under  his  direction,  had  a  frontage  of 
172  feet  and  a  height  of  155  feet,  but,  splendid  old 
building  that  it  was,  it  cost  only  $135,000.  The  land 
upon  which  it  was  built  was  two  acres  or  so  of  what 
was  " commonly  called  the  Governor's  pasture,"  be- 
cause it  was  land  that  was  owned  by  the  widow  of 
Governor  John  Hancock,  recently  deceased,  and  al- 
though the  State  appropriated  $40,000  for  the  land 
it  had  to  pay  in  reality  only  $20,000.  How  times  have 
changed ! 


i. 


L3F 


S53fcr  It** 


CHAPTEE  VII 


A  PICTURESQUE   BOSTONIAN 


society, 
choicest 


HE  most  prominent  Bostonian 
of  Revolutionary  days,  the  Bos- 
ton man  who  loomed  the  largest 
r  mM'^ht'M  an(*  sti^  looms  most  important, 

was  the  splendidly  dressed  John 
Hancock,  and  his  home,  up  near 
the  summit  of  Beacon  Hill,  was 
a  radiant  center  of  wealth  and 
But  that  home,  so  typical  of  the  finest  and 
old-time  life  and  architecture,  has  gone: 
some  half  century  ago,  in  spite  of  the  entreative  pro- 
tests of  all  lovers  of  the  stately  and  beautiful,  it  was 
torn  down  for  the  sake  of  replacing  it  with  a  huge 
house  that  is  hopelessly  humdrum.  Even  the  fine  old 
furniture,  so  representative  of  the  best  old-time  life, 
and  which  had  the  additional  value  of  being  so  asso- 
ciated with  the  man  of  mighty  signature  and  Dorothy 
Q.,  was  lost  or  scattered.  Out  in  Worcester  I  saw  a 
superb  double-chair  of  Chippendale  design,  that  had 
stood  in  the  Hancock  home;  in  Pilgrim  Hall  in  Ply- 
mouth is  a  noble  settee  that  was  of  the  Hancock  fur- 
nishings; in  Marblehead,  in  the  Jeremiah  Lee  man- 
sion, I  saw  six  mahogany  chairs,  Heppelwhites,  beau- 

73 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

tiful  in  design  and  workmanship,  which,  so  tradition 
tells,  were  purchased  at  a  Hancock  auction,  and  car- 
ried up  to  Marblehead  on  a  sloop,  after  John  Han- 
cock's death.  The  portraits,  by  Copley,  of  Hancock 
and  his  wife,  are  fittingly  in  the  Boston  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts. 

Hancock  was  such  a  big  figure  in  his  time,  and 
filled  such  a  space  in  the  public  eye,  that  here  on 
Beacon  Hill,  where  his  house  stood,  near  the  State 
House  that  has  since  been  built  upon  his  cow  pasture, 
his  presence  still  seems  to  be  felt.  Yet  not  only  was 
his  fine  home  destroyed  and  his  fine  furniture  scat- 
tered, but  before  these  things  happened  his  widow 
had  changed  the  name  of  Hancock  for  that  of  one  of 
his  own  ship  captains,  and  forever  left  the  house 
where,  with  the  gorgeous  John,  she  had  welcomed  so 
great  a  number  of  personal  guests  and  guests  of  the 
State  or  the  Nation.  When  Lafayette  visited  Boston 
in  1824,  he  was  escorted,  by  a  great  procession, 
through  the  streets,  and  passing  along  Tremont 
Street,  beside  the  Common,  thoughts  came  to  him  of 
the  noble  hospitality  that  had  long  ago  been  extended 
to  him  in  the  Hancock  mansion;  which  was  then  still 
standing,  on  the  other  side  of  the  great  open  space 
beside  him.  Full  of  such  thoughts  he  lifted  his  eyes 
to  a  window — and  there  sat  Mrs.  James  Scott,  once 
Mrs.  Hancock!  Many  years  had  passed;  but  he 
recognized  her,  he  stopped  the  carriage,  he  rose  in 
his  place  and,  hand  on  heart,  bowed  low ;  and  as  the 
carriage  resumed  its  way  she  sank  back,  overpowered 
by  the  rush  of  memories.    And  such  things  make  the 

74 


A  PICTURESQUE  BOSTONIAN 

past  seem  but  yesterday,  for  the  past  still  lives  when 
one  can  feel  its  very  life  and  watch  its  pulsing  heart- 
throbs. 

But  Boston  never  really  liked  Hancock  That,  as 
a  rich  merchant,  he  was  placed  in  great  public  posi- 
tions of  a  kind  usually  given  to  lawyers,  roused  the 
jealousy  of  lawyers,  and  every  effort  was  made  to 
ignore  or  belittle  him.  And  he  was  an  aristocrat; 
and  revolutions  always  dislike  aristocrats.  He  was 
the  one  conspicuous  aristocrat  of  Boston  who  sided 
against  the  King,  the  others  refugeeing  to  Halifax, 
and  when  the  war  was  over,  and  families  came  in 
from  Salem  and  Quincy  (Braintree)  and  other  places 
to  become  the  leading  families  of  Boston  and  make 
themselves  Boston  ancestors,  Hancock  was  the  only 
prominent  representative  of  the  ancien  regime.  He 
was  himself  born  in  what  is  now  Quincy,  but  had  come 
into  Boston  long  before  the  Revolution  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  his  wealthy  uncle  there.  His  position, 
his  wealth,  his  fine  mansion  that  stood  so  proudly  on 
the  hilltop,  his  lavish  hospitality,  with  gayety  and 
wines  and  dinners  and  music  and  dancing,  made  for 
jealousy  among  those  who  were  invited,  and  for  heart- 
burnings and  backbiting  among  those  who  were  not 
invited  at  all  or  not  so  often  as  they  thought  they 
ought  to  be.  On  the  whole,  he  could  not  but  make 
enemies,  and  the  Boston  of  even  to-day  is  still  moved 
by  their  enmities. 

It  was  not  until  1915  that  this,  his  own  city,  would 
even  put  up  a  memorial  to  him — yet  this  belated  me- 
morial, which  is  set  just  within  the  entrance  of  the 

75 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

State  House,  shows  by  a  brief  enumeration  how  great 
a  man  he  was,  for,  beginning  with  the  admirable 
phrasing,  "John  Hancock,  a  Patriot  of  the  K  evolu- 
tion," it  goes  on  to  enumerate,  with  dignified  brevity, 
that  he  was  President  of  the  Provincial  Congress  of 
1774,  that  he  was  President  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress of  1775-1777,  that  he  was  the  first  signer  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  that  he  was  the  first 
Governor  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts, 
and  was  again,  afterwards,  made  governor,  and  that 
he  was  president  of  the  Convention  that  adopted  the 
Federal  Constitution.  An  amazing  list!  A  man 
who  could  occupy  positions  so  dignified,  so  respon- 
sible, so  honorable,  not  only  among  his  own  people 
but  as  a  chosen  leader  of  strong  men  gathered  from 
all  parts  of  America,  must  have  possessed  remarkable 
qualities  of  leadership. 

More  than  anything  else,  Hancock's  clothes  and  his 
ideas  of  personal  consequence  made  him  enemies! 
He  bought  costly  material.  He  wore  his  clothes  with 
an  air.  He  was  a  Beau  Brummel  of  public  life;  he 
was  more  than  that,  for  he  also  lived  in  state  and  with 
stateliness.  All  this  was  more  noticeable  in  New 
England  than  it  would  have  been  farther  south,  and 
his  colleagues  either  hated  or  disparaged  him  for  it. 

In  the  old  State  House,  now  maintained  as  a  mu- 
seum, not  this  new  State  House,  there  are  preserved 
some  of  his  clothes,  and  I  noticed  in  particular  a 
superb  coat  of  crimson  velvet  and  a  splendid  gold- 
embroidered  waistcoat  of  blue  silk:  there  are,  too, 
some  dainty  slippers  of  white  satin  ar.d  blue  kid, 

76 


A  PICTUEESQUE  BOSTONIAN 

with  roses  of  silk  brocade,  that  his  wife  had  worn. 
These  things  were,  from  their  somewhat  sober  color- 
ing, belongings  of  advancing  years,  but  I  remember 
a  description  of  Hancock  as  a  leader  of  fashion  when 
a  young  man,  and  even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was 
not  arrayed  more  splendidly,  for  there  was  a  coat  of 
scarlet,  lined  with  silk  and  embroidered  with  gold, 
and  there  was  a  waistcoat  embroidered  on  white 
satin,  and  there  were  white  satin  smallclothes  and 
white  silk  stockings  and  silver-buckled  shoes  and 
three-cornered  gold-laced  hat!  He  was  often  called 
"King  Hancock"  from  the  ostentation  of  his  appear- 
ance and  equipage,  and  a  contemporary  description 
declared  that  he  appeared  in  public  with  "all  the 
pageantry  and  state  of  an  oriental  prince,"  attended 
by  servants  in  superb  livery  and  escorted  by  half  a 
hundred  horsemen.  And  another  account  tells  of  his 
loving  to  drive  in  a  great  coach  drawn  by  six  blooded 
bays.  Hancock's  gorgeous  clothes  and  gorgeous  os- 
tentation were  too  much  for  Boston,  and  many  years 
after  his  death  even  the  genial  Holmes  took  a  hu- 
morous fling  at  him : 

"The  Governor  came,  with  his  light-horse  troop, 
And  his  mounted  truckmen,  all  cock-a-hoop; 
Halberds  glittered  and  colors  flew, 
French  horns  whinnied  and  trumpets  blew, 
The  yellow  fifes  whistled  between  their  teeth 
And  the  bumble-bee  bass-drums  boomed  beneath. ' ' 

From  all  that  one  reads  of  Hancock's  manner  and 
appearance,  and  from  the  size  of  the  signature  that 
he  so  conspicuously  and  bravely  set  down,  first  of  the 

77 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  lie  was, 
one  would  gather  the  impression  of  a  big  consequen- 
tial man,  overbearing  and  pompous ;  but  fortunately 
there  is  Copley's  portrait  to  be  seen,  and  Copley  did 
not  thus  picture  him. 

Mrs.  Hancock,  "Dorothy  Q.,"  Copley  pictures  as 
a  slender  lady  in  a  pink  silk  gown  with  tight  sleeves, 
and  a  tambour  muslin  apron,  and  a  tiny  black  velvet 
band  around  the  neck,  and  if  her  forehead  is  a  trifle 
too  high  and  bare  and  her  lips  a  little  too  suggestive 
of  selfishness,  why,  on  the  whole  it  is  an  attractive 
face ;  and  John  Hancock  himself  is  shown  as  a  slight 
and  slender  man,  without  pomposity  of  expression  or 
bearing:  just  a  quiet,  agreeable-looking  man,  hand- 
some and  intelligent,  dressed  without  ostentation  and 
with  extreme  neatness,  in  a  plain  gold-braided  coat, 
with  simple  white  ruffles  at  the  wrists,  and  white  silk 
stockings,  sitting  at  a  desk,  pen  in  hand,  turning  the 
pages  of  a  ledger.  There  is  no  better  way  of  coming 
to  a  judgment  regarding  the  character  of  the  old-time 
leaders  than  by  studying  their  portraits,  when  they 
were  painted  by  such  masters  as  Copley,  Trumbull 
and  Stuart,  and  such  paintings  give  at  the  same  time 
a  feeling  of  intimate  personal  acquaintance  with  the 
men  portrayed. 

Hancock  must  have  been  a  most  unusual  man,  to 
win  leadership  as  he  did  in  the  face  of  depreciation 
and  criticism.  His  great  conspicuous  signature  alone 
would  mark  him  as  unusual;  and  when  he  signed,  it 
was  with  full  knowledge  that  he  was  taking  greater 
risks  than  most  of  the  other  signers,  not  only  because 

78 


A  PICTUKESQUE  BOSTONIAN 

of  his  prominence  as  the  first  of  the  list  but  because 
he  knew  from  personal  observation  the  strength  of 
England,  having  been  one  of  the  few  who  in  those 
early  days  had  crossed  the  Atlantic.  It  is  curious  to 
know  that  Hancock,  the  First  Signer,  was  present  at 
the  coronation  of  George  the  Third !  At  the  time  of 
the  Declaration,  he  had  been  proscribed  for  more  than 
a  year,  on  account  of  Eevolutionary  activities,  and 
when  he  set  down  his  bold  signature  he  exclaimed: 
" There,  John  Bull  can  read  that  without  spectacles! 
Now  let  him  double  his  reward!" 

That  he  risked  so  great  a  stake  as  he  did,  that  he 
risked  great  wealth  and  high  social  position  as  well 
as  life — few  in  the  North  or  the  South  risked  so  much 
— ought  to  have  gone  far  toward  endearing  him  to  his 
contemporaries ;  and,  indeed,  it  was  all  this,  combined 
with  qualities  of  leadership,  that  gave  him  such  suc- 
cessive posts  of  importance.  But  doubtless  there 
was  something  in  his  personality  to  arouse  dislike, 
more  than  can  now  be  seen.  That  he  was,  in  present- 
day  phrase,  his  own  press-agent,  quite  capable  of 
writing  ahead  to  announce  the  time  of  his  intended 
arrival  at  some  place,  and  deprecating  the  idea  of 
popular  enthusiasm  being  shown  by  taking  the  horses 
out  of  his  carriage — his  own  idea,  thus  put  into  the 
heads  of  others! — gives  some  intimation  of  how  he 
won  disfavor. 

The  tablet  set  into  the  fence  in  front  of  the  house 
that  has  replaced  his,  seems  in  itself  to  bring  his  fig- 
ure to  mind,  with  all  his  picturesqueness  of  dressing 
and  dining  and  living  and  driving  and  posing;  for 

79 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

lie  was  certainly  much  of  a  poseur.  But  he  was  ro- 
mantic, too.  He  married  Dorothy  Quincy  early  in 
the  war,  at  Fairfield,  Connecticut,  while  he  was  still 
a  proscribed  man,  unable  to  return  to  Massachusetts 
under  forfeiture  of  his  life;  and,  the  house  being 
afterwards  wantonly  burned  in  one  of  the  barbarous 
burning  coast-wise  raids  of  the  British,  he  sent  down 
material  for  a  new  house  from  Boston,  when  the 
war  was  over,  for  its  rebuilding,  with  the  understand- 
ing that  it  should  be  rebuilt  as  a  copy  of  his  own  house 
in  Boston.  It  is  worth  while  adding  to  this  romance 
in  house-building,  that  the  Fairfield  house,  rebuilt  so 
largely  at  Hancock's  expense  in  memory  of  the  happy 
event  there,  was  completely  altered  in  appearance, 
by  a  new  owner  who  did  not  care  for  beauty,  about  the 
same  time  that  Hancock's  house  on  Beacon  Hill  was 
torn  down  by  an  owner  similarly  iconoclastic.  But 
the  story  of  the  romantic  marriage  at  Thaddeus 
Burr's  house  in  Fairfield  is  still  remembered  in  the 
old  Connecticut  village,  and  the  little  Fairfield  girls 
are  still  named  Dorothy  in  a  sort  of  romantic  memory. 
One  thing  is  hard  to  forgive  him,  and  that  is  his 
flight  from  Lexington,  though  that  is  something  that 
Boston  itself  seems  not  to  question.  He  had  left 
Boston  with  Samuel  Adams,  as  the  first  clash  of  the 
Kevolution  approached,  they  two  being  specifically 
cut  off  from  mercy  by  the  English  Governor's  procla- 
mation which  was  at  the  same  time  offering  mercy 
to  any  others  who  should  seek  it.  The  two  men  had 
taken  shelter  at  Lexington ;  they  had  been  wakened  by 
Paul  Eevere  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the  great 

80 


A  PICTURESQUE  BOSTONIAN 

19th  of  April;  they  thought  that  the  British  would 
like  to  capture  them  even  more  than  to  destroy  the 
military  supplies  in  Concord;  and  they  deemed  dis- 
cretion better  than  valor,  and  fled.  It  is  true  that  they 
were  proscribed,  and  it  is  possible  that  they  did  not 
expect  actual  deadly  shooting  to  take  place  that  morn- 
ing, but  they  also  knew  that  British  soldiers  were  out 
from  Boston  on  grim  duty  and  that  the  minute-men 
were  gathering.  As  they  fled  they  heard  the  bells  of 
village  after  village  solemnly  sounding  across  the 
dark  countryside.  But  they  did  not  turn  back  and 
stand  with  the  farmers  whom  their  own  leadership 
had  taken  into  rebellion.  What  an  opportunity  they 
had!  What  an  opportunity  they  missed!  How  gal- 
lantly they  would  forever  have  figured  in  history  had 
they  even,  after  running  away  from  Lexington,  joined 
the  minute-men  at  Concord  or  on  the  glorious  running 
fight  to  Boston !  It  was  an  opportunity  such  as  comes 
to  few — and  instead  of  accepting  it  Hancock  was 
sending  word  to  his  fiancee,  Dorothy  Quincy,  who  was 
at  the  home  in  Lexington  where  he  had  found  shelter, 
telling  her  to  what  house  he  was  fleeing  and  asking 
her  to  follow  and  to  take  the  salmon! — a  particularly 
fine  specimen  that  he  had  hoped  to  eat  at  breakfast. 
And  Dorothy  Quincy  followed  and  actually  took  it, 
and  it  was  cooked — and  then  came  poetic  justice,  in 
the  shape  of  a  man  wild  with  the  this-time-mistaken 
news  that  the  British  again  were  near,  whereupon 
Hancock  and  Adams  once  more  fled,  salmonless,  and 
when  breakfast  was  at  length  eaten  there  was  only 
cold  pork.    No  wonder,  years  afterward,  Mrs.  Han- 

81 


THE  BOOK  OP  BOSTON 

cock  wrote,  "The  Governor's  hobby  is  his  dinner- 
table,  and  I  suppose  it  is  mine." 

Neither  Hancock  nor  Samuel  Adams  had  the  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  courage  that  makes  a  man 
brave  when  confronted  with  swift  physical  emer- 
gency :  but  they  both  possessed  in  a  high  degree  the 
courage  that  makes  well-dressed  men,  when  combined 
with  other  well-dressed  men,  risk  resolutely  their 
lives  and  property  and  honor.  But  the  lack  of  phys- 
ical courage  did  not  prevent  either  Hancock  or  Sam- 
uel Adams  from  being  given  lofty  positions  of  trust 
and  from  being,  in  turn,  governors  of  Massachusetts. 

In  general,  the  site  of  a  vanished  building  is  not 
particularly  interesting,  but  the  simple  tablet  on  the 
iron  fence,  showing  where  stood  the  picturesque  house 
of  the  picturesque  Hancock,  and  the  belated  memorial 
in  the  State  House,  which  was  built  upon  his  own 
grounds — he  had  intended  presenting  the  land  to  the 
State  for  the  purpose,  and  the  memorandum  for  the 
deed  of  gift  was  under  his  pillow  when  he  died — sum- 
mon up,  as  of  the  moment,  the  remembrance  of  this 
man  of  the  past.  The  land,  the  hill — the  Bostonian 
disparagement! — all  are  still  here,  and  here  is  the 
very  Common  across  which  he  loved  to  look  and  along 
the  side  of  which,  in  front  of  his  mansion,  he  loved  to 
pace,  with  stately  dignity  and  in  stately  clothes ! 

But  it  was  against  the  sternness  of  Puritan  law  for 
any  one  to  stroll,  no  matter  how  sedately,  on  the  Com- 
mon on  Sundays,  and  the  story  is  told  that  even  Han- 
cock, at  the  height  of  his  power,  when  taking  the  air 
one  pleasant  Sunday  afternoon  in  front  of  his  house 

82 


A  PICTURESQUE  BOSTONIAN 

on  the  Common,  which  he  doubtless  looked  upon  al- 
most as  his  own  front  yard,  was  incontinently 
pounced  upon  by  a  constable  and,  in  spite  of  his 
choleric  protestations,  triumphantly  led  away!  The 
story  may  be  apocryphal,  but  it  bears  all  the  marks 
of  truth,  in  the  desire  to  humble  Hancock,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  stand  for  the  sanctity  of  the  Sabbath. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

a  woman's  city 

|HE  Sunday  observance  law 
which  John  Hancock  found, 
to  his  annoyance,  could  be  in- 
voked even  against  a  man  of 
power,  provided  that  "all 
persons  profaning  the  Lord's 
Day  by  walking,  standing  in 
the  streets,  or  any  other  way 
breaking  the  laws  made  for 
the  due  observance  of  the 
Lord's  Day,  may  expect  the 
execution  of  the  law  upon  them  for  all  disorders  of 
this  kind";  and  the  city  still  gives  a  general  impres- 
sion of  respect  for  the  Sabbath.  As  long  ago  as  1711 
Increase  Mather  told  the  Bostonians  that  a  great  fire 
of  that  year  had  come  as  a  punishment  for  not  observ- 
ing the  Sabbath  with  sufficient  strictness,  and  his 
admonition  was  promptly  heeded  and,  so  it  would  seem 
from  appearances,  has  been  heeded  ever  since — al- 
though, one  regrets  to  observe,  without  noticeable  re- 
sults in  the  way  of  fire  prevention. 

The  city  does  not,  however,  give  the  impression  of 
being    particularly    religious.    It    religiously    cele- 

84 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

brates  Sunday  with  fish-cakes  and  brown  bread,  but 
it  is  without  the  general  tramp-tramp-tramp  of 
church-going  feet  that  is  heard  on  the  Sabbath  day 
in  that  city  with  which  it  is  most  often  compared, 
Edinburgh.  There  is  considerable  church-going:  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  Boston  has  long  been  the 
center  of  Unitarianism  and  that  it  has  become  the 
stronghold  of  Christian  Science;  but  the  general  im- 
pression of  the  city  and  its  streets  on  Sunday  is  of  a 
sleepy  quietude  with  comparatively  few  people  stir- 
ring about.  But  not  all  Boston  is  at  church  or  at 
home,  for  in  pleasant  weather  the  principal  roads 
leading  back  into  the  city  are,  at  night,  aflame  with 
motor  lights.  It  used  to  be  that  the  Sabbath  began  on 
Saturday  at  sunset,  and  "upon  no  pretense  whatso- 
ever was  any  man  on  horseback  or  with  a  wagon  to 
pass  into  or  out  of  the  town"  till  the  time  of  Sabbath 
observance  was  over.  Well,  at  least  the  horses  had 
a  day  of  rest.  But  on  the  entire  subject  of  Puritan- 
ism, with  its  varied  inhibitions,  one  cannot  but  think 
of  that  illustrative  antithesis  of  Macaulay,  perhaps 
quite  unfair  but  at  least  quite  unforge table,  that  the 
Puritans  hated  bear-baiting,  not  because  it  gave  pain 
to  the  bear  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  spec- 
tators. 

The  difficulty  of  even  now  getting  food  on  Sunday 
in  Boston  is  really  amusing :  of  course,  the  hotels  are 
open,  but  many  restaurants,  even  such  as  cater  to 
three-meals-a-day  custom,  close  tight  during  all  of 
Sunday! — and  this,  not  merely  in  the  business  sec- 
tion, where  closing  would  be  justified,  but  in  localities 

85 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

where  hosts  of  people,  students  of  the  myriad  educa- 
tional institutions,  and  temporary  dwellers,  without 
home  ties  or  home  facilities,  are  wholly  dependent 
upon  these  local  restaurants.  Eestaurant-closing  is 
a  survival  of  Sunday  observance;  Boston,  except  as 
to  its  own  individual  appetite,  would  fain  remember 
the  Sabbath  day  to  keep  it  hungry. 

Eestaurants,  by  the  way,  average  better  and 
cheaper  in  Boston  than  in  other  great  American  cities. 
In  no  respect,  indeed,  is  the  city  more  admirable  than 
in  being  a  place  where  people  of  limited  means  but 
excellent  tastes  and  desires  may  live  economically 
and  at  the  same  time  with  self-respect :  and  this  comes 
largely  from  the  influence  of  the  innumerable  army 
of  students,  and  visitors  of  the  student  class,  and  un- 
married and  self-supporting  women.  The  general  at- 
mosphere of  Boston  is  one  of  a  pleasant  economy 
which  need  not  at  all  be  associated  with  poverty. 

The  shopping  districts  have  a  number  of  attractive 
little  restaurants  and  tea-rooms,  managed  by  women 
or  by  philanthropic  societies  of  women,  where  a  type 
of  food  is  offered  which  may,  perhaps,  be  described  as 
hygienic  health  food.  There  are  also  "laboratories" 
and  " kitchens' [  and  "food-shops";  not  names  that 
would  attract  one,  I  think,  except  in  New  England. 
Apparently,  the  next  generation  of  New  Englanders 
are  not  to  be  "sons  of  pie  and  daughters  of  dough- 
nut." 

Also,  one  notices  that  there  are  very  few  restau- 
rants open  after  the  generally  announced  closing 
hour  of  eight,  and  one  is  inclined  to  say  that  the 

86 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

fingers  of  one  hand,  and  perhaps  even  the  thumhs 
alone,  would  number  the  places  where  after-theater 
suppers  are  openly  offered.  One  restaurant  freely 
advertises,  without  arousing  comment  or  protest,  that 
it  is  the  "one  bright  spot  in  Boston' '  after  theater 
closing.  There  are  two  or  three  hotels  that  cater  to 
]ate  comers,  but  there  is  little  to  attract  those  who 
would  drop  naturally  into  a  cheerful  restaurant  but 
who  balk  at  going  formally  to  a  hotel.  As  soon  as 
the  theater  is  over,  the  audiences  scurry  into  the  sub- 
way. Those  who  do  not  go  to  the  theater  are  sup- 
posed to  be  in  bed  by  ten  o'clock  or  so.  It  gets  late 
very  early  in  Boston. 

A  curious  effect  of  Sabbath  observance  that  lasted 
until  far  into  the  1800 's  was  the  omission  by  the  thea- 
ters of  Saturday  night  performances.  The  first 
breaking  from  the  old  ideals  came  in  1843,  when  the 
Tremont  Theater  of  that  time  reluctantly  gave  a  Sat- 
urday night  performance  to  please  the  many  visitors 
who  had  come  to  the  city  for  the  Webster  oration  at 
the  dedication  of  Bunker  Hill  Monument.  (It  was 
in  this  theater,  three  years  earlier,  that  Margaret  Ful- 
ler and  Ealph  Waldo  Emerson  together  watched  the 
dancing  of  Fanny  Ellsler,  when,  so  the  tale  runs,  Mar- 
garet whispered  ecstatically,  "Balph,  this  is  poetry!" 
to  which  came  the  philosopher's  fervent  response, 
"Margaret,  it  is  religion!") 

It  is  curious,  with  Boston's  theaters,  to  find  that 
several  of  the  best-constructed  or  most  popular — the 
terms  are  not  necessarily  synonymous — are  on  streets 
that  amaze  the  visitor  with  the  impression  of  being 

87 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

shabby  or  narrow  or  bard  to  find,  such  as  Eliot  Street 
or  Hollis  Street,  or  Tremont  Street  in  a  section 
where  it  suddenly  loses  its  excellent  appearance ;  nat- 
urally, this  sort  of  thing  does  not  strike  a  Bostonian, 
because  he  is  used  to  it :  it  is  like  a  man  knowing  his 
way  familiarly  about  in  his  own  backyard,  although 
it  would  merely  mean  unattractive  exploration  for  a 
stranger.  The  theater  which,  more  than  any  other, 
appeals  to  the  "best  families"  and  for  which  it  is  the 
tradition,  though  by  no  means  the  general  practice, 
to  "dress,"  is  on  a  narrow,  back,  out-of-the-way 
street. 

The  venerable  Boston  Theater — soon,  so  it  is  under- 
stood, to  be  torn  down,  after  a  long,  long  existence — 
has  its  main  entrance  on  Washington  Street;  but  a 
secondary  and  highly  interesting  entrance,  from  the 
best  part  of  Tremont  Street,  is  through  a  long  tun- 
nel-like foot-passage,  and  then  an  actual  underground 
passage  beneath  a  building;  and  another  theater, 
close  by,  has  an  entrance  even  more  interesting,  this 
being  a  hundred  yards  or  so  of  subterranean  passage, 
lined  with  mirrors,  not  only  under  buildings  but 
underneath  a  narrow  street;  although  one  is  so  apt 
to  associate  underground  passages,  at  least  in  an 
old  city,  with  sieges  or  escapes  or  romance. 

The  old  Boston  Theater  was  opened  in  1852,  and 
the  first  words  delivered  from  the  stage  were  those 
of  a  poem  written  for  the  occasion,  that  had  won  a 
prize  of  one  hundred  dollars ;  one  of  the  actors  read- 
ing the  poem,  and  the  author  of  the  lines  being  Par- 
sons, Longfellow's  Poet  of  the  Wayside  Inn.    Even 

88 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

as  late  as  that,  the  Saturday  night  closing  tradition 
was  still  so  generally  adhered  to  that  for  quite  a  while 
no  Saturday  night  performances  were  given  in  this 
theater;  there  were  just  five  evening  performances 
a  week. 

This  city  was  particularly  associated  with  the  life 
of  Edwin  Booth.  His  very  first  appearance  on  any 
stage  was  at  the  old  Boston  Museum  (now  destroyed), 
in  1849,  when  he  played  Tressel  to  the  Bichard  the 
Third  of  his  father,  Junius  Brutus  Booth.  In  the 
good  old  days,  although  there  was  no  rivalry  with  the 
busy  *  'movies,' '  the  theaters  had  a  way  of  giving 
satisfyingly  crowded  evenings,  and  that  particular 
performance  of  "Eichard  the  Third' '  was  accom- 
panied by  a  farce  of  the  decidedly  un-Shakespearean 
name  of  "Slasher  and  Crasher."  Another  evening 
of  two  performances,  "The  Iron  Chest"  and  "Don 
Caesar  de  Bazan,"  this  time  in  1865  and  at  the  Boston 
Theater,  was  to  Booth  tragically  notable,  for  it  was 
on  that  evening  that  his  brother  shot  President 
Lincoln. 

Those  who,  in  the  course  of  the  many  years  of  its 
existence,  have  come  to  know  the  Boston  Theater, 
with  its  circling  Auditorium  and  big  steep  galleries, 
and  to  love  it  on  account  of  its  boasted  acoustic  qual- 
ities, would  have  been  incredibly  amazed  had  they 
been  told  long  ago,  that  the  time  was  to  come,  in  its 
theatrical  career,  when  acoustics  would  not  count :  yet 
that  time  has  really  come,  for  it  has  been  turned  over 
to  the  "movies,"  pending  destruction. 

Among  the  many  memories  associated  with  the 

89 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

theater  is  that  of  the  great  ball  given  here  in  honor 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  afterwards  Edward  the 
Seventh,  in  I860,  when  the  wealth  and  fashion  of  Bos- 
ton came  here  to  do  him  honor.  I  have  somewhere 
seen  it  noted  that  some  fifteen  hundred  tickets  were 
subscribed  for,  for  that  literally  princely  ball  at  the 
Boston  Theater;  one  thousand  for  couples  and  the 
other  five  hundred  for  additional  ladies  accompanying 
them,  thus  making  two  women  for  each  man,  which 
would  seem  to  point  out  that  even  long  ago  Boston  was 
a  woman's  city. 

At  any  rate,  Boston  is  a  woman's  city  now ;  not  that 
women  are  collectively  of  more  importance  than  men, 
but  that  they  are  of  much  more  than  usual  impor- 
tance :  there  is  no  other  city  in  which  women  are  rela- 
tively of  such  consequence.  Yet  it  is  not  distinctively 
a  suffragist  city,  and,  surprisingly  for  a  woman's 
stronghold,  the  women  anti-suffragists  are  very  active. 

More  than  in  any  other  city,  women  go  unescorted 
and  without  question  to  theaters  and  restaurants. 
So  many  women  are  independent,  so  many  women 
are  employed  in  stores  and  in  offices,  that,  more  than 
in  other  cities,  respectable  women  alone  on  the  streets 
at  night  are  a  common  sight,  and  they  attract  neither 
comment  nor  attention.  They  have  what  Barrie  calls 
the  * '  twelve-pound  look. ' '  They  are  well-set-up,  well 
clad,  carefully  shod,  precise,  good-looking:  they  go 
quietly  about  their  business  in  a  way  that  makes  other 
people  go  about  theirs.  And  it  has  worked  out  with 
perfect  naturalness,  through  the  safeguarding  of  re- 
spectable women,  that  the  city  government  and  the 

90 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

police  see  to  it  that  those  of  another  class  are  very 
slightly  in  general  evidence.  This  does  not  at  all 
mean  that  Boston  is  any  better  than  other  cities,  but 
that  a  different  situation  as  regards  women  in  general 
makes  for  a  different  treatment  of  the  entire  subject 
of  women.  I  know  of  a  lonely  woman,  not  beyond 
middle  age,  and  what  Bostonians  call  well-born,  who, 
all  of  her  relatives  being  dead,  and  she  being  deaf  and 
very  sensitive,  spends  almost  every  evening  in  the 
summertime  sitting,  until  eleven  o'clock  or  so,  on  a 
bench  in  the  Charles  Eiver  Parkway,  looking  out  over 
the  water ;  and  I  do  not  know  of  any  other  large  city 
where  a  woman,  not  old,  could  sit  on  a  bench  in  a 
public  park,  without  attracting  the  slightest  attention 
whatever. 

The  fact  that  so  many  women  are  so  eminently  cap- 
able of  taking  care  of  themselves  brings  about  the 
natural  consequence  that  they  are  freely  permitted  to 
take  care  of  themselves;  for  example,  in  other  cities 
one  of  the  rarest  sights  is  to  see  a  woman  carrying  a 
heavy  traveling-bag,  but  here  in  Boston  it  is  a  sight 
so  common  as  to  attract  no  notice  whatever.  In  the 
daytime  or  at  night-time  you  will  frequently  see 
a  well-dressed  woman,  an  independent  feme  sole, 
walking  briskly  along,  heavy  bag  in  hand;  and  I  do 
not  mean  carrying  the  pleasant  little  Boston  shop- 
ping bags  but  literal  valises,  and  I  have  not  infre- 
quently seen  a  woman  carrying  not  only  one  big  valise 
but  one  in  each  hand. 

On  the  average,  too,  this  being  a  woman's  city  has 
had  a  not  unnatural  result  upon  woman's  dressing, 

91 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

it  being,  on  the  average,  not  quite  so  merely  attractive 
or  charming  as  it  is  in  most  cities.  There  is  a  great 
deal  of  highly  excellent  dressing  on  the  part  of  the 
women,  but  it  is  excellent  and  good  in  the  sense  in 
which  a  man's  dressing  would  be  deomed  good:  it  is 
not  quite  so  much  a  matter  of  following  the  fashion 
as  of  wearing  good  clothes  of  good  material ;  and,  as 
with  the  men,  the  women  are  likely  to  keep  their  excel- 
lent clothes  until  they  begin  to  show  wear,  instead  of 
being  quite  so  subject  as  are  the  women  of  other 
cities  to  what  would  be  termed  the  whims  of  fashion. 
Boston  has  an  extraordinary  number  of  well-tailored 
women,  but  perhaps  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  mostly 
a  matter  of  excellent  grooming.  There  is  a  smaller 
proportion  of  women  in  Boston  than  in  other  cities 
who  dress  merely  to  flutter  along  a  fashionable  prom- 
enade to  please  the  eyes  of  observers. 

I  noticed  at  the  street  door  of  a  fashionable  shop 
where  they  sell  nothing  more  intimate  than  hats  and 
millinery,  a  sign  such  as  I  never  saw  in  any  other  city, 
for  it  bluntly  reads,  "No  admission  for  men" !  And 
it  is  not  an  emergency  sign,  for  a  crowded  season,  but 
is  permanently  lettered  on  brass.  Imagine  such  a 
sign  on  a  hat  shop  on  Bond  Street  or  the  Bue  de  la 
Paix,  or  in  Berlin,  let  us  say,  where  the  Emperor 
William  loves  to  go  out  and  buy  his  wife's  hats  and 
surprise  her  with  them,  and  then  expects  her  to  sim- 
ulate joy! 

A  marked  result  of  the  unusual  consequence  of 
women  here  is  the  unusual  importance,  both  relatively 
and  in  themselves,  of  women's  clubs;  and  the  women 

92 


A    SPIRAL   STAIRWAY    BY    BULFINCH,    ON    BEACON    HILL 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

show  that  they  can  excellently  equip  and  excellently 
manage  their  clubs.  One,  the  Women's  City  Club, 
has  had  the  excellent  taste  to  acquire  for  its  club-house 
a  building  that  is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  Ameri- 
can town-house  architecture;  it  is  a  house  built  by 
Bulfinch,  and  is  one  of  a  pair  of  balanced  mansions, 
each  with  the  distinguished  bow-front  of  Boston  and 
each  with  a  beautifully  pillared  and  fan-lighted  door- 
way. This  club-house  is  at  40  Beacon  Street,  and 
looks  down  on  the  pool  and  the  elms  of  the  Common, 
and  it  is  worth  becoming  familiar  with  not  only  to  see 
how  excellently  the  women  chose  a  headquarters  but 
also  to  see  what  was  the  kind  of  house  that  Bulfinch 
won  his  fame  in  building. 

The  front  hall  is  broad,  with  a  small  reception  room 
at  one  side,  and  from  it  there  starts  upward,  with  a 
charming  curl  to  the  top  of  its  newel-post,  a  most 
graceful,  aerial,  spiral  stair  which  mounts  up  and  up, 
a  thing  of  ease  and  lightness  and  grace,  toward  the 
great  round  cupola  or  lantern  that  throws  down  its 
light  from  the  roof  for  the  entire  stair.  The  rail  is 
mahogany,  the  balusters  are  white,  and  the  steps  are 
white,  with  a  crimson  carpet. 

What  was  originally  the  dining-room  is  the  large 
room  at  the  front  on  the  main  floor,  and  it  swells  finely 
into  the  swell  of  the  great  window-bow.  The  rear  wall 
of  this  room  curves  backward  in  exact  balance  with  the 
curve  of  the  front,  and  its  two  mahogany  doors  are 
set  into  the  curve,  thus  producing  the  effect  of  an 
oval  room  even  though  the  side-walls  are  straight. 
A  fireplace,  in  staid  setting  of  white  and  green  marble, 

93 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

faces  the  door.  The  windows  are  large  and  mahogany 
sashed,  with  dark  heavy  curtains  hanging  straight 
down  from  up  above  the  window-tops  and  caught  aside 
with  rosetted  holders  of  brass ;  these  club  women  aim- 
ing constantly  to  keep  up,  in  adjuncts,  with  the  excel- 
lent effect  that  Bulfinch  with  his  architecture  began. 
The  doors,  six-paneled  and  broad,  are  of  mahogany, 
and  those  that  are  in  the  curve  at  the  back  of  the  room 
are  themselves  curved  to  fit  it,  such  being  the  design- 
er's completeness  of  detail.  The  door  in  the  hall 
opens  in  two  flaps  and  is  broad  enough  to  permit  the 
guests  to  walk  in  to  dinner  two  by  two,  in  the  old-fash- 
ioned formal  way. 

Behind  the  dining-room  is  the  great  old  kitchen, 
with  its  open  fire-place,  its  ovens,  and  its  queerly 
built-in  iron-domed  concavities.  Ascending  the  main 
stair,  whose  tread  and  rise  are  a  delight,  we  enter  an 
ante-room  with  a  lovely,  mellow  marble  mantel,  and 
from  this  room  pass  through  an  opening  with  fluted 
pillars  into  what  was  the  great  drawing-room,  this 
being  an  oval  room,  rich  in  fine  Greek  detail,  with 
exquisite  mantel,  exquisitely  molded  cornice  and  ex- 
quisitely designed  oval  ceiling;  a  room  by  an  Ameri- 
can architect  of  which  an  American  may  be  proud ! 

The  house  was  built  to  be  heated  by  wood  fires,  and 
a  niche  in  the  hall  marks  where  an  iron  urn  originally 
stood,  which  received  its  heat  from  a  fire  in  the  cellar 
for  the  heating  of  the  hall,  such  being  the  method  in 
use  before  the  days  of  modern  furnaces  and  furnace 
pipes;  and  it  is  interesting  to  remember  that  almost 
all  of  the  houses  we  now  see  on  Beacon  Hill  were 

94 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

built  back  in  the  days  of  wood  fires,  when  the  wood  was 
sawed  on  the  sidewalk  and  stored  in  the  cellars,  or 
in  woodhouses  in  the  yards;  and  that  not  only  were 
there  primitive  methods  of  heating,  and  also  of  light- 
ing, but  that  there  was  even  no  public  water  supply 
until  less  than  three  quarters  of  a  century  ago,  and 
that  almost  all  of  these  old  houses  still  have  wells  in 
their  cellars,  even  though  the  wells  may  in  the  course 
of  time  have  been  filled  up. 

In  a  sense  Bulfinch,  the  architect  of  the  house  of  the 
Women's  Club,  made  Boston.  He  gave  the  city  a 
high  standard  of  architectual  distinction.  He  gave 
it  architectual  individuality.  He  gave  it  the  type  of 
dwelling  of  which  this  club-house  is  such  an  admirable 
example.  And  not  only  did  he  admirably  design 
dwellings  and  set  a  high  standard  which  other  archi- 
tects were  glad  to  follow,  but  he  also  gave  to  America 
its  general  type  of  State  House.  As  the  honored 
architect  of  the  State  House  of  Massachusetts  he  was 
called  to  Washington  to  take  charge  of  the  Capitol 
there,  and  his  ideas  as  to  public  buildings  have  been 
followed  throughout  America.  Any  city  would  have 
the  right  to  be  proud  of  this  great  man,  and  so  it  is 
particularly  pleasant  to  remember  that  not  only  was 
he  an  American  but  that  he  was  so  much  so  that  as  a 
small  boy  he  watched  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  from 
the  roof  of  his  father's  house. 

It  is  interesting  that  when,  toward  the  close  of  his 
life,  Bulfinch  was  asked  if  he  would  train  any  of  his 
children  in  his  own  profession,  he  naively  replied  that 
he  did  not  think  there  would  really  be  enough  left  for 

95 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

any  architect  to  do !  The  different  cities,  he  went  on, 
and  the  principal  States,  were  already  supplied  with 
their  principal  buildings,  and  he  hardly  thought  there 
could  be  enough  building  to  do  in  the  future  for  a 
young  man  to  make  his  living  as  an  architect. 

Perhaps  it  was  from  remembering  that  Boston  is 
a  woman's  city  that  I  thought  of  its  being  the  home 
of  Alice  Brown,  and  there  came  the  further  thought 
that  not  only  are  the  homes  of  writers  of  the  past 
worth  noticing,  but  also  the  homes  of  writers  of  the 
present  day,  especially  when,  as  in  the  case  of  Miss 
Brown,  the  present  day  writer  is  one  whose  work  is 
of  grace  and  distinction.  Naturally,  I  did  not  much 
expect  to  find  the  name  of  Alice  Brown  in  the  tele- 
phone directory;  there  would  be  " John  Brown' '  and 
14  James  Brown"  and  other  Browns,  but  not  likely 
the  one  as  to  whose  home  I  had  become  interested. 
Still,  the  telephone  book  was  handy,  and  I  might  as 
well  look. — And  I  realized  as  never  before  that  Bos- 
ton is  a  woman's  city,  for,  each  with  her  separate 
telephone  number,  there  were  nine  Alice  Browns  look- 
ing up  at  me,  so  to  speak,  from  the  page!  Nine 
Alices  with  name  so  Brown,  as  the  old  song  almost 
has  it !  Fascinated,  my  eyes  wandered  up  and  down 
the  columns,  and  I  noted  telephones  for  women 
Browns  innumerable:  three  Annas,  three  Berthas, 
four  Lauras,  no  fewer  than  twelve  Marys,  and  an 
ever-lengthening  list  leading  to  Katharine  and  Sarah 
and  Alice  and  Inez  and  Corah  and  Daisy  and  Lillia 
and  Lillian,  up  to  one  hundred  and  nineteen  in  all, 
and  many  a  Browne  more  with  an  "e"  to  follow! 

96 


A  WOMAN'S  CITY 

And  as  other  names  of  the  directory  would  be  like 
Brown,  I  thought  of  how  thin  a  telephone  book  would 
be  Boston's  if  all  the  women's  names  were  taken  out ! 
And  even  with  the  nine  Alice  Browns,  the  name  of 
Alice  Brown  the  writer  is  not  to  be  found.  But  her 
house  is  on  Beacon  Hill,  at  11  Pinckney  Street;  a 
brick  house,  prim,  pleasant  and  precise,  with  iron- 
railed  steps  leading  up  to  a  curve-topped  entrance- 
way. 

That  Boston  is  a  woman's  city  came  to  me,  just  a 
few  days  ago,  in  still  another  way,  for  a  Bostonian 
friend  handed  me  a  letter,  just  received,  and  said  that 
I  really  ought  to  use  it  because  it  was  so  typical  of  old 
Boston  and  she  knew  that  the  sender  would  not  be 
displeased  if  she  should  ever  know  it  had  been  pub- 
lished. The  writer  of  the  letter  is  one  of  two  elderly 
maiden  sisters,  who  always  dress  in  heavy  black  silk, 
and  whose  hair  is  still  done  in  the  prim,  old-fashioned 
way  of  Civil  War  times,  and  who  still  live  in  the  old 
house,  in  its  still  aristocratic  neighborhood,  in  which 
they  were  born. 

"I  walked  home,"  thus  part  of  the  typical  letter 
runs,  "  doing  several  errands  on  the  way,  and  most 
of  the  evening  I  was  reading  to  my  sister,  and  this 
morning  I  awoke  early,  lighted  my  candle  and  read 
until  I  had  to  get  ready  for  breakfast!"  She  read 
by  candlelight!  What  a  picture  in  these  modern 
days!  "Then  settled  down  comfortably  to  tackle 
a  tableful  of  monthly  bills  waiting  for  the  checks  to 
pay  them,  stopping  long  enough  to  look  over  a  list  of 
kitchen  furnishings  that  the  cook  had  ordered  and  to 

97 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 
write  a  Christmas  poem  which  my  sister  had  been 


What  charming 
-and  a  Christmas 


composing,  from  her  dictation! 
old-fashioned  sisterly  sympathy- 
poem!  "Now  it  is  one  o'clock,  and  I  haven't  begun 
my  bills,  and  there  are  the  dinner  chimes.  We  dine 
at  one"  (old-fashioned  again!),  " myself,  my  sister's 
attendant  and  her  secretary,  and  sometimes" — what 
a  touch! — "our  stately  black  cat." 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  PARK   STREET  CORNER 


HE  unusual  prominence  of 
monuments  to  ministers  in 
Boston  might,  at  first  thought, 
be  ascribed  by  some  to  the  fact 
of  this  being  a  woman's  city; 
but  of  course,  as  any  Boston- 
ian  would  at  once  tell  you,  it 
is  really  because  of  the  unusual 
prominence  of  ministers  in  the 
development  and  life  of  the  city.  There  is  the  me- 
morial to  Phillips  Brooks  beside  his  church,  at  a  busy 
edge  of  Copley  Square,  he  being  set  within  a  canopied 
marble  niche,  garbed  in  his  bishop's  robes,  with  an 
angelic  figure  behind  him:  and  not  far  away,  at  the 
nearest  corner  of  the  Public  Garden,  there  is  niched, 
like  a  cinque-cento  saint,  the  long-gowned  figure  of 
William  Ellery  Channing.  Entirely  unlike  both  of 
these,  in  its  exceedingly  unsaintlike  appearance,  is 
the  monument  to  another  minister,  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  at  a  Charles  Street  entrance  to  the  Public  Gar- 
den, for  he  stands  in  wait  in  the  shrubs,  just  inside 
the  gate,  in  every-day  clothes  and  long  loose  overcoat, 
stooping,  as  if  pausing  for  a  moment  in  his  walk,  with 

99 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

his  old-fashioned  beaver  hat  in  one  hand  and  his  cane 
in  the  other ;  a  man  honorably  known  to  all  Americans 
for  his  "Man  without  a  Country." 

To  commemorate  not  only  the  clerical  profession 
but  the  medical,  there  is  within  the  Public  Garden  a 
monument  that  gave  Holmes  the  inspiration  for  a 
brilliant  bit  of  wit.  The  monument  was  designed  to 
commemorate  the  discovery  of  Ether,  the  mastering 
of  the  whole  problem  of  consciousness  of  pain  in  surg- 
ery, but  while  it  was  under  construction  a  fierce  and 
never-to-be-settled  controversy  arose  as  to  which  of 
two  claimant  physicians  was  really  the  discoverer,  and 
so  the  monument  was  completed  with  the  name  of  the 
man  omitted,  which  led  Holmes  promptly  to  suggest, 
with  that  obviousness  which  marks  all  great  wit,  that 
it  was  not  so  much  a  monument  to  Ether  as  to  Either. 

There  is  an  exceedingly  prominent  monument,  the 
big  equestrian  of  General  Hooker,  set  up  in  front  of 
the  State  House,  which  is  also  interesting  on  account 
of  what  is  left  off,  for  there  is  nothing  but  the  single 
word  "Hooker";  as  if,  one  may  fairly  suppose,  when 
they  came  to  the  matter  of  inscription,  it  was  remem- 
bered that  the  only  battle  of  consequence  in  which 
General  Hooker  commanded  was  the  terrible  defeat 
of  Chancellorsville.  It  is  sometimes  delightfully  wise 
to  have  brief  inscriptions  on  statues.  After  all,  New 
England  was  not  fortunate  in  developing  great  mili- 
tary leaders  in  the  Civil  War,  in  spite  of  her  promi- 
nence in  the  events  and  discussions  preceding  the 
struggle  and  in  spite  of  the  vast  number  of  her  men 
who  gallantly  went  to  the  front;  she  developed  no 

100 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  PARK  STRfifiT'  <30RNEK; 

Grant  or  Thomas  or  Sherman;  and  "already^  she -has* 
practically  hidden,  off  on  one  side  of  the  State  House, 
statues  of  the  never-prominent  General  Banks  and 
General  Devens.  But  monumenting  in  haste  and  re- 
penting at  leisure  is  something  far  older  than  Amer- 
ica. And  it  is  a  favorite  Boston  belief,  long  held  and 
often  expressed,  that  if  she  should  set  up  statues  to 
all  her  distinguished  sons  there  would  be  no  room  left 
in  which  people  could  move  about. 

Diagonally  across  from  the  Hooker  monument,  just 
away  from  the  corner  of  Park  and  Beacon  Streets, 
close  to  the  altered  Ticknor  homestead,  is  a  little 
house,  tucked  in  among  towering  business  buildings 
and  faced  by  a  great  hotel:  and  this  house,  still  a 
home,  is  filled  with  paintings  collected  years  ago  in  Eu- 
rope. It  stood  before  the  Revolution  (its  front  has 
been  changed),  and  about  1830  was  the  home  of 
Chester  Harding,  the  New  England-born,  backwoods 
artist  who,  after  making  his  success  in  Paris — but  it 
was  a  Paris  in  Kentucky — painted  the  great  ones  of 
America  and  of  England,  including  judges  and  sena- 
tors and  some  half  dozen  of  the  dukes,  and  then  came 
back  to  Boston.  For  some  time  while  in  Boston  he 
so  eclipsed  Gilbert  Stuart  that  that  great  painter  was 
wont  to  ask,  looking  at  his  own  empty  studio  and 
knowing  that  Harding's  was  thronged,  "How  rages 
the  Harding  fever  f  " 

Close  by  is  the  Athenaeum,  most  charming  and  de- 
lightful of  libraries,  full  of  serenity  and  repose  and 
rich  in  its  great  collection  of  books.  Not  only  does  it 
possess  the  workable  and  readable  books  of  recent 

101 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

years;  but  precious  prints  and  books  and  manuscripts 
of  the  past,  and  such  treasure  as  the  greater  part  of 
the  library  of  George  Washington,  each  book,  with 
his  signature  and  bookplate,  deposited  here  after 
its  purchase  in  1849  by ' i  seventy  gentlemen  of  Boston, 
Cambridge  and  Salem,' '  who  contributed  fifty  dollars 
each  to  obtain  it.  To  the  Bostonian  of  tradition,  the 
Athenaeum  still  proudly  represents  the  essence  of  the 
city ;  the  building  is  admirably  impressive  outwardly, 
it  is  attractive  and  full  of  atmosphere  within,  and  it 
is  rich  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  best  of  Boston.  Its 
main  entrance  has  a  replica  of  Houdon's  life-size 
statue  of  Washington,  a  replica,  modeled  by  Houdon 
himself,  of  the  original,  which  was  made  for  the  State 
of  Virginia  and  is  preserved  at  Richmond;  Houdon 
having  come  to  America  to  make  a  statue  of  Washing- 
ton, at  the  request  of  Franklin,  who  knew  him  in  Paris. 

The  main  reading-room,  occupying  the  great  upper 
floor,  is  of  unusual  architectural  beauty,  with  its 
vaulted  roof,  its  pillars  and  alcoves,  its  general  fine- 
ness and  comfort.  The  library  is  peculiarly  fitted  to 
the  needs  of  the  scholar,  and  membership  in  it,  to  be 
a  "proprietor,"  as  is  the  term,  is  highly  esteemed. 

The  great  rear  windows  of  the  Athenaeum  look  down 
into  the  ancient  deep-shaded  Granary  Burying- 
Ground,  and  off  at  one  side,  also  looking  down  into  the 
burying-ground,  are  the  windows  of  that  monthly,  the 
Atlantic,  which  is  itself  another  of  the  treasured  be- 
longings of  Boston :  and  especially  is  the  bowed  win- 
dow noticeable  when  one  learns  that  it  is  the  window 
of  the  oval  room  in  which  James  Russell  Lowell 

102 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  PAEK  STREET  CORNER 

reigned  as  editor  and  where  he  still  looks  down 
benignantly  from  the  wall,  like  a  patron  saint:  and 
although  one  may  do  full  honor  to  his  memory  and  to 
his  fine  influence,  the  profuse  and  double-pointed 
whiskers  do  rouse  the  recollection  of  the  little  girl  who 
asked:    "But  what  are  the  points  for?" 

There  are  few  more  impressive  burying-grounds 
in  the  world  than  the  Granary,  fronting  out  on  busy 
Tremont  Street  and  hemmed  in  on  its  other  sides  by 
towering  business  structures,  by  the  phalanxed  win- 
dows of  the  quiet  Athenaeum,  by  the  publishing  build- 
ings, and  by  the  old  Park  Street  Church.  The  Gran- 
ary has  impressiveness,  it  even  has  beauty,  and  it  has 
an  aloofness  that  comes  from  its  being  some  three 
feet  or  so  above  the  level  of  the  thronging  sidewalk 
that  it  adjoins. 

Anciently  a  granary  actually  stood  here,  but  the 
place  long  since  came  to  be  a  crowded  human  granary 
instead ;  and  what  a  roll  of  fascinating  old-time  names 
might  be  called  here !  Hancock,  Sewall,  Bellingham, 
Faneuil,  Samuel  Adams,  Franklin  (the  parents  of 
Benjamin  Franklin  are  buried  here),  Cushing, 
Phillips,  Otis,  Revere!  There  are  royal  governors, 
patriot  governors,  signers  of  the  Declaration,  orators, 
leaders  among  the  citizens — it  would  be  a  long,  long 
roll !  And  there  would  be  a  strange  unexpectedness  if 
responses  should  come,  for  many  of  the  stones  in  this 
graveyard  were  long  ago  indiscriminately  changed 
about.  At  one  time  they  were  even  tidied  and  set  in 
rows  to  meet  the  landscape-gardening  and  grass-mow- 
ing proclivities  of  a  city  official!    There  was  some 

103 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

mild  objection  to  this,  but  nothing  was  done  to  check 
or  correct  the  changing,  and  when,  long  afterwards, 
people  began  to  speak  strongly  about  it,  it  was  too 
late,  for  records  had  not  been  kept. 

Although  Boston  thinks  a  great  deal  of  the  people 
of  the  past,  they  would  seem  to  have  acquired  some- 
what careless  habits  of  caring  for  their  remains.  Gil- 
bert Stuart  was  mislaid.  Major  Pitcairn  was  lost, 
and  it  was  probably  a  substitute  body  that  was  sent 
back  to  England  as  his,  to  rest  in  Westminster.  The 
stones  on  Copp's  Hill  were  changed  about  or  used 
for  doorsteps.  And  here  in  the  Granary  the  muni- 
cipal idiosyncrasy  has  been  even  more  striking.  It 
was  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  who  remarked  of  this 
graveyard,  that  the  stones  really  tell  the  truth  when 
they  say  "Here  lies." 

But  although  this  carelessness  of  the  past  needs  to 
be  known  it  does  not  affect  the  dignity,  the  solemnity, 
the  impressiveness  of  the  place.  It  merely  means  that 
the  visitor  must  be  content  to  honor  these  worthies 
of  the  past  in  mass  rather  than  in  detail.  They  are 
all  there.  They  all  lie  somewhere  within  the  broad  en- 
closure. Upon  their  confused  resting-places  the  tall 
office  buildings  look  down,  and  beside  them  the  public 
go  hurrying  along  the  crowded  sidewalk.  They  are 
somewhere  here,  beneath  the  shade  of  the  thickly  clus- 
tered horse-chestnuts  and  honey  locusts,  and  it  really 
is  not  worth  while  to  try  and  pick  out  the  still  properly 
marked  graves  from  the  mistaken  ones. 

One  of  the  two  young  duellists  of  whom  Holmes 
wrote,  who  fought  to  the  death  on  the  Common,  is 

104 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  PAEK  STEEET  COENEE 

buried  here,  and  it  is  curious  that  this  seems  to  be 
better  remembered,  by  most  people,  than  does  the 
fact  that  here  were  buried  so  many  great  and  famous 
folk,  although  that  young  duellist  has  no  claim  to  fame 
except  that  of  dying  in  a  duel  which  seized  upon  the 
imagination  of  the  man  whose  personality  permeates 
all  Boston. 

A  high,  open,  iron  fence  standing  on  a  low,  dark 
retaining  wall,  separates  the  burying-ground  from  the 
street,  and  the  entrance  is  through  a  black  and  gloomy 
stone  arch,  with  a  suggestion  of  the  Egyptian  in  style, 
flanked  at  either  end  of  the  wall  by  a  black  stone  pillar. 

It  is  pleasant  to  notice  that  with  such  a  great  area 
of  office  buildings  looking  down  into  this  resting  place 
of  American  dead,  there  is  scarcely  a  business  sign 
to  be  seen,  although  the  opportunity  and  temptation 
are  so  great.  It  is  a  fine  example  of  business  re- 
straint. Indeed,  one  at  first  thinks  that  there  is  ab- 
solutely no  sign  at  all,  for  it  is  only  by  carefully  look- 
ing for  them  that  two  or  three  very  little  ones  are 
found. 

From  the  Athenaeum  itself,  from  a  little  high- 
perched  coign  of  vantage  there,  a  little  outside  summer 
reading-place  which  fairly  overhangs  the  back  of  the 
Granary  graveyard,  the  most  striking  of  all  views  of 
the  inclosure  may  be  had,  for  from  this  point  one 
looks  down  through  the  treetops  on  curving  lines  of 
little  dull-colored  headstones,  standing  shoulder  to 
shoulder  on  the  green  dark  grass,  under  the  gloomy 
trees,  like  gloomy  spirits  of  New  England  consciences 
forever  looking  out,  with  drooping  shoulders,  through 

105 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  great  iron  fence,  upon  the  passing  of  their  descend- 
ants and  successors. 

The  Granary  burying-ground  antedates  the  church 
beside  it,  the  fine  old  building,  with  Christopher  Wren- 
like steeple,  known  as  the  Park  Street  Church.  And 
one  is  tempted  to  think  of  this  church  as,  on  the  whole, 
the  most  typically  Bostonian  building  of  Boston.  On 
its  prominent  corner  at  the  foot  of  the  slope  leading 
up  to  the  State  House,  and  with  its  windows  looking 
out  on  one  side  over  the  Common,  and  on  the  other  one 
the  Granary  ground,  it  seems  as  if  it  had  grown  there, 
so  natural  it  is,  so  easy,  so  graceful,  so  felicitous, 
standing  there  in  so  sweet  a  pride. 

The  delightful  spire  is  notable,  not  only  for  the  per- 
fection of  its  upper  proportions  but  also  in  not  rising 
from  the  building  itself  but,  instead,  forming  the  ex- 
tension of  a  tower  that  itself  rises  from  the  ground, 
church  and  tower  being  connected  by  pillared  curves, 
quadrant-like,  which  architectually  unite  them  into  an 
indivisible  whole,  with  no  sign  of  separation.  There 
could  not  be  a  more  charmingly  picturesque  corner, 
for  the  Common,  than  is  made  by  this  so  charming  and 
picturesque  a  church. 

For  many  years  the  building  was  painted,  and  even 
in  its  dull  drab  was  attractive,  but  it  has  recently  been 
vastly  improved,  as  a  number  of  other  old  Boston 
buildings  have  similarly  been  improved,  by  the  clean- 
ing of  all  the  paint  from  the  brick  and  by  the  painting 
anew  of  all  the  wood;  thus  restored  to  its  original 
design  the  church  now  positively  sparkles  in  its  white 
paint  and  mellow  red  brick. 

106 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  PAEK  STBEET  COENEE 

Park  Street  Church  is  not  so  old  as  are  several 
others  in  Boston,  for  it  dates  back  only  to  a  little 
more  than  a  century  ago,  but  in  its  short  life  it  has 
not  been  without  claims  to  distinction ;  the  first  public 
address  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison  was  delivered  in 
this  building,  and  here  for  the  first  time  the  hymn 
1 '  America ' '  was  publicly  sung. 

Beneath  the  church  are  a  gay-looking  flower-shop 
and  picturesque  tea-rooms,  and  they  seem  pleasantly 
Bostonian  in  their  churchly  location,  for  until  recent 
years  a  bookstore  was  quartered  in  the  basement  of 
the  Old  South  Church,  and  I  have  noticed  a  furniture- 
packing  shop  beneath  a  church  at  the  foot  of  Beacon 
Hill,  and  it  used  to  be,  when  the  Hollis  Street  Church 
was  standing,  that  its  pastor,  a  powerful  advocate  of 
prohibition,  used  to  deliver  attacks  on  drink  at  the 
same  time  that  the  vaults  beneath  his  feet  were  rented 
by  three  pillars  of  his  church,  distillers,  for  the  stor- 
age of  casks,  giving  rise  to  the  still-remembered  epi- 
gram: 

11  Above,  the  spirit  Divine, 
Below,  the  spirits  of  wine." 

The  corner  where  stands  so  felicitously  the  alto- 
gether attractive  Park  Street  Church  has  itself  given 
rise  to  a  flash  of  real  wit,  especially  notable  as  show- 
ing that  Holmes  did  not  utter  every  witty  Boston  say- 
ing. For  this  came  from  a  certain  long-ago  Apple- 
ton,  brother-in-law  of  Longfellow,  famed  as  a  humor- 
ist and  bon  vivant,  a  man  of  wealth  and  family  but 
whose  humor,  still  remembered  reiteratively,  usually 

107 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

took  some  such  form  as  sailing  for  Europe,  without 
telling  any  one,  on  the  very  day  that  he  was  expected 
to  be  host  or  guest  at  a  dinner.  However,  the  corner 
beside  Park  Street  Church  really  inspired  him  to  one 
excellent  jest.  For  it  is  a  very  windy  corner,  one  of 
the  windiest  in  all  Boston,  and  Appleton  dryly  re- 
marked one  day  that  there  really  ought  to  be  a  shorn 
lamb  tethered  there! 


CHAPTEE  X 


TWO   FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 


N  a  February  night  in  1688,  a 
striking  funeral  pageant  passed 
through  the  streets  of  Boston; 
the  funeral  procession  of  Lady 
Andros,  the  wife  of  Governor 
Andros.  And  how  far  away 
that  seems!  1688 — that  was  the 
far-away  year  that  marked  the  downfall  of  the  second 
James.  That  year  seems  far  away  even  when  one  is 
over  in  England,  and  therefore  it  seems  curiously  far 
away  in  this  New  England.  Yet  in  1688  Boston  had 
for  decades  been  settled.  People  had  already  begun 
to  think  of  it  as  a  long-established  place.  People  had 
already  begun  to  look  with  interest  at  those  who  could 
rightfully  claim  the  title  of  "old  inhabitants'' ! 

That  winter-night  funeral  of  Lady  Andros  made  a 
grimly  striking  scene.  A  hearse  with  six  horses  drew 
the  body.  Soldiers  lined  the  way.  Torches  flickered 
and  blazed  to  light  the  snowy  streets.  Candles  and 
torches  lighted  the  old  church.  Six  "mourning 
women,"  as  they  were  called,  walked  behind  the  body 
until  it  was  set  down  before  the  pulpit  and  then  they 
seated  themselves  beside  it  like  dismal  ghosts.    The 

109 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

church  was  crowded.  The  minister,  with  the  grim  di- 
rectness of  old  times,  preached  frankly  from  the  text, 
"All  flesh  is  grass.' '  And  when  the  ceremony  was 
over  the  body  was  borne  out  of  the  little  chapel,  a 
building  standing  where  now  stands  the  Old  South 
Church,  on  what  is  now  Washington  Street,  and  car- 
ried to  the  burying-ground  now  known  as  that  of 
King's  Chapel,  on  Tremont  Street,  King's  Chapel 
itself  having  not  then  been  built.  That  winter  night 
funeral  was  dramatic  indeed. 

What  is  supposed  to  be  the  grave  of  Lady  Andros 
is  still  to  be  seen,  here  within  this  ancient  inclosure 
of  King's  Chapel  Burying-ground,  and  here  too  is 
many  another  of  interest.  The  supposedly  oldest 
remaining  stone  is  that  of  a  certain  William  Paddy, 
who  died  in  1658.  Born  in  the  year  1600,  this  man; 
born  twenty  years  before  the  sailing  of  the  May 
■flower;  born  while  Elizabeth  was  still  Queen;  yet  here 
in  Boston  is  his  grave,  still  marked.  Here  rest  the 
remains  of  many  a  Leverett  and  Wendell  and  Mather 
and  Cotton,  and  especially  is  it  the  last  home  of  many 
a  Winthrop,  and  in  a  Winthrop  tomb  lies  that  Mary 
Chilton  Winthrop  who  not  only  was  one  of  those  who 
crossed  in  the  first  voyage  of  the  Mayflower  but  who, 
so  the  delightful  old  story  has  it,  was  the  first  woman 
to  land  in  America  from  that  immortal  ship.  I  do 
not  know  how  one  can  come  to  a  more  practical  and 
more  vivid  appreciation  of  the  American  past,  than 
by  stepping  aside,  from  the  busy,  rushing  street,  into 
the  down-sloping  bit  of  burial-ground,  hemmed  in  by 
street  and  chapel  and  business  blocks  and  city  hall, 

110 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

and  standing  beside  the  very  tomb  within  which  lie 
the  remains  of  that  Mayflower  passenger,  the  first 
woman  to  step  upon  the  Kock. 

And  modestly,  very,  very  modestly,  far  over  at  one 
side  of  the  graveyard,  stands  a  stone  which  marks 
the  resting-place  of  one  Elizabeth  Pain,  and  it  simply 
records  without  any  of  the  old-time  reference  to 
beauty  of  character  or  beauty  of  life  or  the  grief  of 
the  remaining  relatives,  that  she  departed  this  life  in 
1704;  and  a  sort  of  chill  comes,  a  grim  feeling  of  the 
severity  of  the  past  and  of  the  present,  when  you 
know  that  this  is  understood  to  be  the  grave  of  the 
poor  woman  who  gave  to  Hawthorne  his  idea  of 
Hester  Prynne :  for  it  will,  of  course,  be  remembered 
that  the  scene  of  the  ''Scarlet  Letter"  was  Boston 
and  not  Salem,  although  it  was  in  Salem  that  the  book 
was  written.  The  poor  Elizabeth  with  the  suggestive 
surname  was  one  of  the  earliest  Americans  to  learn 
that  the  fatted  calf  is  never  killed  for  the  prodigal 
daughter. 

Here  in  this  really  ancient  graveyard  is  the  tomb  of 
Eobert  Keayne,  who  founded,  half  a  century  before 
the  time  of  the  Andros  funeral,  his  Ancient  and  Hon- 
orable Artillery  Company,  which  is  still  existent. 
Over  at  one  side  of  the  enclosure,  I  chanced  upon  the 
name  of  Tudor,  a  name  mildly  prominent  in  early 
New  England  history;  and  the  thought  comes  of  that 
New  England  Tudor— could  this  have  been  the  very 
one! — who,  when  presented  at  the  court  of  King 
George  the  Third,  caused  a  look  of  pleased  astonish- 
ment to  come  over  the  bored  face  of  the  monarch  at 

111 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  mention  of  his  name:  "Eh,  eh,  what!  Tudor? 
One  of  us,  eh,  what?" 

The  present  King's  Chapel,  beside  the  old  burying- 
ground,  is  a  pillar-fronted,  rather  low,  square-towered 
building,  a  building  rather  dark  and  dusky  in  effect, 
built  not  on  the  general  lines  of  most  of  our  early 
churches,  but  following  the  design  of  some  of  the  old- 
fashioned  little  churches  of  London.  And  the  pil- 
lars are  not  of  stone,  as  they  seem  to  be,  but  of  wood. 
Taken  by  itself  it  would  seem  to  be  a  veritable  bit  out 
of  London.  The  very  first  King's  Chapel  was  built 
here  in  the  very  year  in  which  Lady  Andros  died, 
and  although  that  first  building  was  wood  instead  of 
stone,  and  although  it  was  a  little  smaller  than  the 
present  chapel,  which  is  itself  quite  small,  it  must 
have  been  a  church  with  a  great  deal  of  display  and 
impressiveness,  for  along  its  walls  were  hung  the 
escutcheons  of  the  King  of  England  and  of  the  vari- 
ous Eoyal  Governors  who  had  been  sent  out  to  Massa- 
chusetts. Even  in  those  early  days  it  was  looked  upon 
as  rather  an  ostentatious  building. 

The  present  chapel  was  built  over  a  century  and  a 
half  ago;  services  were  first  held  here  in  1754;  and 
the  interior  is  not  without  a  certain  richness  of  effect, 
simple  though  it  is.  It  is  really  a  cozily  attractive 
little  church,  with  its  white  walls  and  galleries  and 
pillars  and  its  square  pews  with  dark  mahogany  top- 
rails  and  linings  of  red  baize.  The  pairing  of  the 
pillars  adds  much  to  the  excellent  effect,  as  do  also 
the  Corinthian  capitals.  The  ceiling  is  unusually 
low  even  for  a  small  church  and  there  is  also  the  un- 

112 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

usual  feature,  for  America,  that  the  floor  is  made  of 
small  square  stones.  The  comfortable,  square,  en- 
closed pews  seem  additionally  quaint  and  comfortable 
from  their  being  fitted  with  stands  for  canes  and 
umbrellas,  and  little  shelves  for  prayer-books  and 
Bibles,  and  even  with  chairs  in  addition  to  the  fixed 
benches  of  the  pews. 

Tradition  has  not  preserved  the  precise  location  of 
the  pew  in  which  Washington  sat  when  they  gave  an 
oratorio  in  this  building  to  entertain  him  in  1789,  but 
one  may  fairly  suppose  that  it  was  the  pew  known 
as  the  Governor's  Pew,  which  was  in  early  days  sur- 
mounted by  a  canopy  and  in  which  sat  in  succession  a 
line  of  pre-Eevolutionary  royal  governors,  beginning 
with  Governor  Shirley,  who  laid  the  cornerstone  of 
the  building.  Here,  too,  sat  General  Gage  and  Sir 
William  Howe,  in  the  early  part  of  the  Eevolutionary 
War.  Familiar  as  Washington  was  with  the  churches 
and  the  architecture  of  the  entire  country  he  must 
have  looked  with  much  interest  at  the  high-set  pulpit, 
the  very  pulpit  which  is  still  in  place  and  used,  for 
it  is  believed  to  be  the  oldest  in  New  England  and 
possibly  in  the  United  States ;  it  dates  well  back  before 
the  building  of  this  present  building,  for  it  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  earlier  church  to  this,  and  is  said  to 
be  at  least  as  old  as  1717  and  perhaps  to  have  been  in 
the  older  church  from  its  very  beginning  in  1688„ 
It  is  certainly  interesting,  with  its  twisting  stair 
charmingly  enclosed  with  panels  and  pilasters,  and 
its  heavy  suspended  sounding-board. 

King's  Chapel  has  a  connection  with  what  is  often 

113 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

written  about  as  one  of  the  romances  of  early  Amer- 
ican days,  for  one  of  those  who  united  to  build  the 
present  structure  was  that  Sir  Henry  Frankland  who, 
up  at  Marblehead,  fell  in  love  with  the  inn-keeper's 
pretty  daughter,  Agnes  Surriage,  and  brought  her 
to  Boston;  his  pew  is  still  remembered  and  is  the  one 
now  numbered  20;  but  Frankland  played  anything 
but  a  manly  man's  part,  and  the  masters  and  lovers  of 
real  American  romance,  Longfellow  and  Hawthorne, 
did  nothing,  I  think,  to  give  the  story  its  amazing 
vogue. 

The  present  organ  of  King's  Chapel  was  sent  out 
from  England  in  1756,  and  has  from  time  to  time  been 
rebuilt  and  enlarged,  and  it  is  said  to  have  been  the  per- 
sonal selection  of  the  mighty  Handel,  who  tested  it 
and  played  upon  it  at  the  request  of  King  George  the 
Second,  who  counted  him  as  a  friend  and  asked  this 
favor  of  him. 

There  are  various  old  monuments,  inside  this 
church,  of  worthies  of  the  past,  including  a  noticeable 
one,  in  the  most  florid  Westminster  Abbey  funeral 
style,  to  the  memory  of  Samuel  Vassall,  who  belied 
his  name  by  being  very  independent  indeed,  and  who 
won  fame  and  wealth  as  a  patriotic  merchant  in  the  old 
days  when  loyalty  meant  loyalty  to  the  King. 

The  funeral  of  General  Warren,  who  was  killed  at 
Bunker  Hill,  was  held  in  this  chapel  after  the  city 
came  into  the  possession  of  the  Americans.  There, 
too,  was  held  the  funeral  of  Charles.  Sumner.  And 
among  the  monuments  within  the  building  is  one  to 
men  who  were  connected  with  this  chapel  and  who 

114 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

died  in  the  Civil  War.  Already  our  churches  are  com- 
ing to  be  like  those  of  England,  where  there  are  me- 
morials to  the  men  of  war  after  war  in  never-ending 
succession. 

A  cheerful  memory  of  this  chapel  is  that  it  was  the 
regular  place  of  worship  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
who,  year  after  year,  sat  in  pew  102  in  the  south 
gallery.  One  may  fancy  what  a  trial  or  what  a  re- 
ward it  must  often  have  been  for  the  rector,  after 
some  argumentative  or  oratorical  effort,  to  glance  up 
and  catch  those  keen  eyes  looking  at  him  with  ap- 
praisal in  the  glance ;  it  must  have  kept  a  succession 
of  rectors  well  up  to  the  mark  to  know  that  such  an 
autocratic  critic  was  watching  them. 

The  King's  Chapel  Burying-ground  used  to  be 
known,  long  ago,  as  the  Old  South  Church  Burying- 
Ground,  although  the  Old  South  Church  is  a  few 
blocks  away,  and  on  Washington  Street. 

On  the  front  of  the  Old  South  is  an  inscription 
which  tells  that  the  church  gathered  in  1669 ;  that  the 
first  church  building  was  put  up  in  1670;  that  the 
present  church  building  was  erected  in  1729 ;  and  that 
it  was  desecrated  by  the  British  troops  in  1775-6. 
But  this  enumeration  of  facts  and  dates  quite  ignores 
an  event  which  a  great  many  people  would  deem  the 
most  interesting  of  all,  and  that  is  that  Benjamin 
Franklin  w^as  baptised  here  in  1706. 

What  a  busy  day  that  was  in  the  house  near  by, 
now  long  since  vanished,  where  the  Franklins  lived! 
The  father  Josiah,  and  Abiah  his  wife,  attended 
service  at  the  Old  South  Church  in  the  morning. 

115 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Little  Benjamin  was  born  at  noon.  And  that  very 
afternoon  lie  was  proudly  carried  to  church  to  be 
christened ! 

One  cannot  but  remember  Benjamin's  own  sum- 
mary of  the  lives  of  his  parents.  "Without  any  es- 
tate, or  any  gainful  employment,  by  constant  labor 
and  industry,  with  God's  blessing,  they  maintained  a 
large  family  comfortably,  and  brought  up  thirteen 
children  and  seven  grandchildren  reputably.' '  "He 
was  a  pious  and  prudent  man,"  records  Benjamin  of 
his  father,  Josiah ;  and  of  Abiah,  his  mother,  he  faith- 
fully records  that  she  was  "a  discreet  and  virtuous 
woman.  * ' 

In  the  front  of  the  church,  beside  the  tablet  of 
dates,  is  a  placard  which,  although  meant  to  express 
the  standpoint  of  the  old-time  patriots  as  a  lesson 
for  future  generations,  is  positively  misleading,  for 
it  refers  to  winning  victories  for  liberty  and  the  peo- 
ple "under  the  law."  But  there  could  not  be  a 
greater  misapprehension.  The  whole  standpoint  of 
the  patriots  of  the  Kevolution  is  missed.  The  Eevolu- 
tion  stood  for  bravely  acting  against  the  law,  for  not 
heeding  danger  to  life  or  estate  when  it  seemed  right 
to  act  against  the  constituted  authorities.  The  tea 
ships,  the  fight  at  Lexington,  the  stand  on  Bunker  Hill 
— what  an  absurdity  to  think  of  such  things  as  "un- 
der the  law"!  It  is  a  solemn  thing  for  a  people  to 
stand  against  the  law,  but  the  glory  of  the  Bevolution 
was  that  the  patriots  did  stand  against  the  law. 
When  Joseph  Warren  made  his  entry  through  a  win- 
dow into  the  pulpit  of  this  very  church  and  there  de- 

116 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

nounced  in  fiery  words  the  British  soldiers,  the  very- 
officers  and  soldiers  who  crowded  about  the  front  of 
the  pulpit  while  he  spoke,  he  had  no  thought  of  acting 
under  the  law,  nor  did  he  dream  of  being  under  the 
law  when,  three  months  later,  he  bravely  gave  his  life 
as  the  British  came  charging  up  the  hill  over  in 
Charlestown. 

The  Old  South  is  a  neat  and  attractive  building  of 
brick  with  a  slender  spire  of  wood.  The  spire  is  grace- 
ful, but  the  tower  that  supports  it,  and  which  itself 
projects  a  little  upon  the  busy  sidewalk,  is  heavy  in 
proportion. 

Entering  the  church  through  a  vestibule  beneath  the 
tower  we  find  that  the  interior  has  not  been  treated  in 
the  usual  style  of  the  Gothic  nave,  but  is  broader  in 
proportion  than  would  be  expected  in  a  church ;  it  has 
its  pulpit,  not  at  one  end,  but  in  the  middle  of  one 
side;  and,  unexpectedly  for  such  a  small  building, 
there  are  two  galleries  facing  it.  The  pulpit  is  only 
in  part  the  original  pulpit,  but  the  needful  restoration 
was  made  along  the  original  lines ;  it  is  of  admirable 
shape,  with  pillar  supports  and  elaborate  cornice,  and 
it  has  a  little  rounding  projection  of  mahogany  on  its 
front,  a  sort  of  pleasing  bulge,  for  the  standing  place 
of  the  speaker.  The  window  behind  the  pulpit  is  big 
and  broad,  a  sort  of  Palladian  window,  flanked  by 
reeded  pillars ;  and  as  one  stands  here  it  is  impossible 
not  to  picture  the  thrilling  scene  when  Warren  made 
his  way  through  this  window,  opened  for  his  entrance, 
stepped  to  the  little  bulge  in  front  of  the  pulpit, 
and  with  superb  bravery  delivered  his  thrilling  ad- 

117 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

dress  to  the  people  who  packed  the  building  itself  and 
the  very  aisles  and  entrances.  It  was  a  brave  day  for 
America. 

The  building  long  ago  won  the  high-sounding  name 
of  the  " Sanctuary  of  Freedom,"  because  within  it 
were  held  some  of  the  most  momentous  of  the  town- 
meetings  that  preceded  the  Eevolution;  and  during 
the  Revolutionary  "War  it  was  singled  out  by  the  Brit- 
ish for  contemptuous  treatment,  and  was  turned  into  a 
riding-school  for  cavalry,  and  tons  of  earth  were 
thrown  upon  the  floor  to  give  footing  for  the  horses ; 
and  in  addition  the  pews  were  burned  to  keep  the 
soldiers  warm.  One  may  regret  the  burning  of  the 
old  pews,  but  it  would  not  be  in  the  least  a  regrettable 
act  if  the  present  cheap-looking  wooden  chairs,  with 
cheap  perforated  seats  and  backs,  could  be  given  to  the 
British  or  anybody  else,  and  burned.  It  cost  over 
$400,000  to  save  this  church  from  being  torn  down  for 
the  erection  of  a  big  office  building,  and  Boston  people 
gladly  raised  the  huge  sum,  and  it  does  seem  a  pity 
that  a  very  little  of  that  sum  was  not  utilized  to  put  in 
fitting  benches,  if  not  pews. 

A  few  relics  of  Revolutionary  days  are  shown  in 
this  building,  and  there  are  photographs,  to  suit  the 
taste  of  such  as  care  for  such  a  thing,  of  the  skull  of 
General  Warren,  showing  the  fatal  bullet-hole :  an  ex- 
hibition which  perhaps  might  have  been  spared. 

Not  only  were  the  old  pews  burned  by  the  British, 
but  many  valuable  books  and  manuscripts  regarding 
early  New  England,  that  had  been  stored  in  the  tower 
of  the  old  church,  were  also  brought  down  and  thrown 

118 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

in  the  fire  to  help  keep  the  soldiers  comfortable  in 
the  cold  winter  days  of  the  siege. 

And  the  most  important  manuscript  in  the  world, 
as  a  leading  New  Englander,  Senator  Hoar,  in  his 
formal  speech  on  the  final  recovery  of  the  manuscript, 
called  it,  was  seized  upon  with  others  of  the  treasures 
of  the  Old  South  tower,  and  was  preserved  by  some 
strange  and  never  to  be  explained  chance,  and  long 
afterwards  was  discovered  by  another  of  the  strang- 
est of  chances,  over  in  England,  and  at  length  was 
returned  to  America.  This  was  the  absolutely  in- 
valuable holograph  account  of  the  May-flower  expedi- 
tion, and  of  the  early  days  in  Holland  and  in  Plymouth, 
by  the  great  Governor  William  Bradford  himself ;  and 
the  story  of  this  manuscript  is  the  most  extraordinary 
literary  romance  of  the  world. 

When  the  books  and  manuscripts  were  dragged 
down  from  the  tower  this  manuscript,  which  after- 
wards came  to  be  known  mistakenly  as  the  "Log  of 
the  Mayflower,"  was  spared,  though  no  one  knows 
by  whom;  no  one  knows  whether  its  value  was  even 
guessed  at,  but  presumably  it  must  have  been,  for  it 
was  carried  to  England,  no  one  knows  by  whom,  and 
when  the  Americans  once  more  took  possession  of  the 
city,  it  was  not  to  be  found  and  was  supposed  to  have 
been  burned  and  its  records  and  data  thus  forever 
lost. 

More  than  half  a  century  after  its  disappearance, 
an  English  bishop,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  wrote  a 
book,  which  attracted  scarcely  any  attention,  on  the 
history  of  the  church  in  America,  and,  quite  a  number 

119 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

of  years  after  its  publication,  an  American,  turning 
over  the  leaves  of  the  bishop  's  history,  was  startled  by 
some  references  to  a  manuscript,  undescribed  except 
as  being  in  the  possession  of  the  Bishop  of  London  in 
the  library  of  his  palace  at  Fulham.  The  American 
— there  is  some  question  as  to  whether  it  was  a  man 
named  Thornton  or  one  named  Barry — was  fortu- 
nately one  who  knew  early  American  history,  and 
he  knew  that  the  facts  quoted  in  that  book  on  the 
church  could  have  only  one  source,  and  that  was  the 
Bradford  manuscript,  which  had  been  quoted  to  some 
extent  by  early  American  chroniclers  and  which  every- 
body supposed  had  long  ago  been  lost.  At  once 
definite  inquiry  was  made,  and  it  was  learned  that  this 
was  indeed  the  long  lost  work  of  Bradford,  although 
neither  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  nor  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don himself  could  throw  light  upon  how  or  when  it 
had  come  into  English  possession. 

Americans  at  once  began  a  campaign  to  recover  it, 
frankly  taking  the  ground,  when  they  met  with  delay 
and  doubt,  that  the  excuse  of  loot  in  war  time  had 
never  been  applied  to  the  permanent  retention  of 
literary  treasures.  The  English  themselves  were  in- 
clined to  agree  with  this,  but  things  moved  slowly,  and 
it  took  about  half  a  century  before  negotiations  were 
fortunately  concluded.  They  might  have  been  going 
on  even  yet  had  it  not  been  for  another  of  the  strangely 
fortunate  chances  in  regard  to  the  history  of  this 
manuscript,  and  this  was  that  a  new  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don was  appointed  who  felt  cordial  toward  the  United 
States  and  said  frankly  that  he,  for  his  part,  would 

120 


TWO  FAMOUS  OLD  BUILDINGS 

hand  over  the  manuscript  if  he  were  given  the  author- 
ization of  his  superior,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
and  that  soon  after  this  he  was  himself  appointed,  by 
a  whimsical  chance,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury! 
Whereupon,  in  1897,  the  thing  was  done,  and  the  in- 
valuable manuscript  came  back  to  Boston  and  was  wel- 
comed with  great  ceremonies  and  public  speeches  after 
its  strange  absence  of  a  century  and  a  quarter. 

But  it  was  not  again  deposited  in  the  Old  South 
steeple !  Instead,  as  the  prized  possession  of  the  State 
of  Massachusetts,  and  not  of  Boston  alone,  it  is  kept 
in  the  library  of  the  State  House,  up  on  Beacon  Hill, 
and  is  there  shown  freely  to  any  one  who  cares  to  see 
it. 


nnip1 


CHAPTEE  XI 

TO   THE   OLD   STATE   HOUSE 

N  early  days  Washington  Street,  upon 
which  the  Old  South  Church  faces,  was 
known  in  its  successive  sections  as  Corn- 
hill,  Marlborough  Street,  Newbury  Street 
and  Orange  Street;  names  not  thrown 
away  but  frugally  saved  to  be  used  in  a 
new  district ;  and  all  were  merged  in  the 
patriotic  name  of  Washington  because 
Washington  himself  entered  the  city 
along  this  route  at  the  time  of  his  visit 
in  1789 ;  and  perhaps  the  naming  was  partly  in  amends 
for  having  kept  him  waiting  for  two  hours,  mounted 
on  his  white  horse,  just  outside  of  the  town  limits, 
while  the  State  and  town  authorities  debated  on  just 
how  he  was  to  be  received. 

It  was  fortunate  that  Washington  had  drilled  him- 
self to  patience  and  at  the  same  time  that  he  well 
knew  how  to  hold  his  dignity,  for  in  the  early  days  of 
the  adoption  of  our  Federal  Constitution  a  burst  of 
anger  on  his  part,  or  even  of  impatience,  no  matter 
how  well  justified,  might  have  had  a  disastrous  na- 
tional effect,  as  might  also  any  impairment  of  the 
President's  proper  position.    Yet,  though  he  looked 

122 


TO  THE  OLD  STATE  HOUSE 

upon  a  little  waiting  as  too  minor  a  thing  to  be  taken 
notice  of  by  a  great  man,  be  did  not  overlook  Governor 
John  Hancock's  not  coming  to  call  upon  him.  Han- 
cock stayed  at  home,  as  if  thinking  a  Massachusetts 
governor  more  important  in  Massachusetts  than  a 
President  of  the  United  States,  and  as  if  expecting 
Washington  to  make  the  first  call ;  but  this,  Washing- 
ton absolutely  refused  to  do ;  not  only  his  own  dignity 
but  the  dignity  of  the  nation  was  at  stake;  and  on 
the  next  day  Hancock,  swathed  in  explanatory  flannel 
wrappings,  belatedly  and  formally  called,  offering  an 
alleged  attack  of  the  gout  as  an  excuse  for  not  calling 
the  day  before.  And  perhaps  the  gout  was  real.  Or, 
if  Hancock  had  but  tardily  done  honor  to  the  first 
President,  it  was  probably  because  John  Adams,  the 
first  Vice-President,  had  entered  Boston  in  the  Presi- 
dent's company,  and  that  Hancock  and  John  Adams 
were  far  from  being  friends,  Adams  having  even  gone 
to  such  a  length,  in  his  jealousy,  as  to  term  Hancock  an 
" empty  barrel";  the  resounding  sound  of  which  ap- 
pellation must  have  reached  Hancock's  ears.  But 
there  ought  not  to  have  been  any  real  ill  feeling  on  the 
part  of  Hancock  toward  Washington,  whatever  may 
have  been  the  case  as  to  John  Adams.  Hancock  had 
named  his  only  son  after  himself  and  Washington, 
John  George  Washington  Hancock,  and  that  the  little 
fellow  had  recently  died  would  assuredly  make  even 
closer  the  personal  tie  between  President  and  Gov- 
ernor. 

Other  streets  of  old  Boston  have  had  their  names 
changed,  for  reasons  not  so  excellent  as  those  which 

123 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

gave  the  city  Washington  Street,  and  on  a  few  of  the 
corners  the  old  names  are  given  as  well  as  the  new,  but 
in  the  main  the  old  ones  are  forgotten.  The  greater 
number  of  changes  seem  to  have  been  made  because, 
as  the  city  grew  bigger,  it  became  more  finical;  and 
one  realizes  that  Frog  Lane  would  not  be  so  excellent 
a  business  address  as  Boylston  Street,  that  Pudding 
Lane  and  Black  Jack  Alley  would  seem  less  respect- 
able than  Devonshire  Street,  that  Black  Horse  Lane  is 
more  dignified,  if  that  were  all,  as  Prince  Street ;  but 
it  is  not  clear  why  the  delightful  name  of  Eoyal  Ex- 
change Lane  should  have  been  altered,  except  actually 
during  the  time  of  the  Eevolution,  to  Exchange  Street, 
and  it  is  hard  to  reconcile  oneself  to  Broad  Alley  be- 
coming Hollis  Street,  to  Turnaway  Alley  becoming 
Temple  Place,  and  to  Coventry  Street  becoming  the 
prosaic  Walnut;  one  may  quite  sympathize  with 
changing  Blott's  Lane  to  Winter  Street  but  feel  that 
romance  was  lost  in  altering  Seven  Star  Lane  to  Sum- 
mer Street ;  and  if  it  might  be  objected  that  Seven  Star 
Lane  does  not  sound  citified  enough  there  would  really 
be  no  objection  to  calling  it  the  Street  of  the  Seven 
Stars. 

Washington  Street,  and  especially  that  part  which 
is  directly  through  from  the  Common,  has  especial  in- 
terest in  the  difference  between  its  general  aspect  in 
the  evening  and  its  aspects  during  the  day.  In  the 
morning  the  better  part  of  it  is  crowded  with  the 
women  of  the  socially  elect  doing  their  shopping,  and 
in  the  afternoon  with  women  whom  the  socially  elect 
consider  hoi  polloi;  and  the  men  who  thread  their  way 

124 


TO  THE  OLD  STATE  HOUSE 

along  the  narrow-sidewalked  shopping  sections  in 
daytime  are  alert  business  men,  not  too  intensely  hur- 
ried; the  daytime  is  the  time  of  Boston  bags  and  pros- 
perity ;  but  in  the  evening,  for  a  few  hours — never  un- 
til really  late,  for  this  is  an  early  city — it  is  differently 
thronged  and  brilliantly  lighted,  and  at  this  time  it 
gives  much  the  aspect  of  the  main  street  of  a  busy 
English  mill  town,  crowded  as  it  is  with  the  people 
who  come  for  the  "movies"  and  the  cheaper  theaters, 
or  who  are  out  simply  for  a  stroll. 

Boston  has  not  lost  capacity  for  enthusiasms ;  cities, 
like  men,  need  that ;  but  Boston  shows  enthusiasm  in  a 
typically  quiet  way.  I  have  seen  Washington  Street, 
in  the  business  center,  jammed  solid  for  several  blocks 
with  a  crowd,  estimated  by  the  police  as  numbeiing 
from  twenty-five  to  forty  thousand,  which  absolutely 
stopped  traffic,  and  all  these  people  had  gathered  to 
watch  the  score-boards  of  several  newspaper  offices 
that  are  close  together  there ;  for  the  Boston  club  was 
playing  for  the  League  championship  in  old  Philadel- 
phia. The  streets  were  packed  to  capacity  for  a  long 
distance  within  sight  of  the  boards,  and  the  windows 
and  roofs  were  crowded  with  decorous,  neat,  well- 
tailored,  well-dressed,  self-restrained  men,  every  one 
with  his  shoes  polished  and  his  hat  on  straight.  It 
was  a  very  proper  crowd.  Many  of  the  men  were 
ready  to  yell  if  an  announcement  were  extremely  fav- 
orable, but  even  then  they  would  not  yell  very  loud. 
The  business  men  and  office  clerks  of  the  city  had 
given  up  an  entire  business  afternoon  to  follow  in 
packed  decorousness  the  record  of  a  baseball  game. 

125 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

A  walk  of  less  than  five  minutes  on  Washington 
Street,  from  the  Old  South  Church,  takes  one  to  the 
corner  of  State  Street,  where  once  stood  the  book- 
shop which  graduated  that  superb  artillery  officer, 
Henry  Knox ;  and  here  there  opens  out  what  is  known 
as  State  House  Square,  out  in  the  center  of  which 
stands  the  Old  State  House. 

Once  in  a  while,  in  Boston,  it  is  necessary  to  say,  in 
differentiation,  the  New  State  House  or  the  Old  State 
House,  for  when  the  new  one  was  put  up  the  old  one 
was  preserved,  and  it  stands  among  the  new  busi- 
ness buildings  of  the  busiest  district  of  the  city.  Ex- 
tremely strong  efforts  have  from  time  to  time  been 
made  to  destroy  this  old  building  and  use  its  site  in 
important  business  development,  and  great  financial 
temptation  has  been  offered  to  the  city,  and  the  argu- 
ments for  the  needs  of  business  were  really  so  cogent 
that  a  few  years  ago  it  seemed  as  if  the  city  would 
yield  to  them.  It  had  already  yielded,  so  far  as  giv- 
ing over  the  building  to  rental  for  offices  and  other 
business  purposes  was  concerned,  and  there  was  dan- 
ger that  the  entire  building  would  be  given  up.  But 
while  the  city  wavered,  hesitant  and  doubting,  the  news 
went  out  through  the  country  that  perhaps  the  long- 
treasured  building  was  doomed,  whereupon  a  formal 
message  came  from  the  city  of  Chicago,  offering  to 
buy  the  old  structure  in  order  to  tear  it  down  and 
rebuild  it,  brick  by  brick,  out  there  on  the  shore  of 
Lake  Michigan.  The  structure  would  thus  be  kept, 
so  Chicago  with  earnest  dignity  expressed  it,  as  an 
American  monument  for  all  America  to  revere. 

126 


TO  THE  OLD  STATE  HOUSE 

Of  course  that  settled  it.  Perhaps  the  building 
would  have  been  preserved  in  any  event,  but  after  that 
message,  had  Boston  decided  to  tear  the  building 
down,  it  would  have  been  quite  impossible  for  her  to 
throw  away  the  bricks  when  Chicago  was  ready  not 
only  to  pay  for  them  but  to  build  them  up  again  and 
honor  them,  and  it  would  have  been  altogether  un- 
bearable for  Boston  to  think  of  people  going  to 
Chicago  to  see  this  old  State  House! — and  so  it  still 
stands  here. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Chicago  won  another 
victory  for  the  world  by  offering  to  buy  and  set  up 
within  its  own  precincts  the  birthplace  of  Shake- 
speare, when  that  building  was  about  to  be  lost  to 
Stratford,  and  in  that  case,  as  in  this,  the  offer  by 
that  broad-mindedly  acquisitive  city  of  the  West  was 
sufficient  to  secure  the  preservation  of  the  old  build- 
ing on  its  original  site.  It  is  interesting  to  speculate 
what  buildings  of  the  world,  whether  in  America  or 
Europe  or  Asia,  will  in  time  be  pleasantly  captured 
by  Chicago  in  this  way. 

The  Old  State  House  is  a  building  of  piquant  in- 
dividuality; it  would  easily  attract  attention  any- 
where ;  without  knowing  anything  about  it  one  would 
be  sure  that  it  must  be  a  building  of  interest,  and  it  is. 

It  stands  at  what  was  long  the  center  of  much  that 
was  important  in  old  Boston.  In  the  open  space  be- 
side it  and  beside  the  still  earlier  building  that  pre- 
ceded it  was  the  early  public  market  of  the  city;  in 
fact,  the  public  market  was  not  only  beside  but  un- 
der the  earlier  building,  which,  in  the  old  English 

127 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

market-place  way,  was  built  upon  pillars,  leaving  the 
level  space  beneath  the  building  as  an  open  arcade 
for  the  merchants. 

Even  the  present  building  has  a  history  that  goes 
back  to  1713,  and  when,  about  forty  years  afterwards, 
it  suffered  a  disastrous  fire,  at  least  the  walls  of  1713 
were  saved,  thus  preserving  the  early  felicitous  shape 
and  proportions  of  the  building. 

Hereabouts  went  on  much  of  the  early  Boston  life. 
Here  in  the  open  square  stood  a  cage,  for  the  display, 
in  restrained  publicity,  of  such  as  had  dared  to  violate 
the  Sabbath ;  here  were  the  stocks ;  here  was  the  pil- 
lory— reminders,  these,  that  all  was  not  gentleness  and 
moral  suasion  in  the  days  of  yore ! — and  here  stood, 
even  into  the  nineteenth  century,  the  whipping-post. 
It  is  not  with  any  spirit  of  criticism  of  the  past  that 
these  things  are  mentioned;  it  is  proper  to  speak  of 
them,  that  we  may  not  forget  that  the  past  was  not  al- 
together perfect. 

Nobler  and  more  tragic  than  such  associations  is 
the  association  with  what  has  always  been  known  as 
the  Boston  Massacre,  of  1770 ;  directly  in  front  of  this 
building  is  where  the  fatal  shooting  by  the  English 
soldiers  took  place,  that  roused  a  wild  storm  of  in- 
dignation that  even  yet  is  remembered,  and  which  in 
itself  had  much  to  do  with  intensifying  and  crystalliz- 
ing the  sentiment  in  favor  of  an  actual  and  final  break 
with  England.  In  the  general  excitement  of  that  time 
and  the  feeling  that  at  any  moment,  should  the  de- 
mands of  the  citizens  for  the  removal  of  the  soldiers 
from  Boston  not  be  heeded,  there  might  be  actual  war- 

128 


TO  THE  OLD  STATE  HOUSE 

fare,  most  of  the  men  of  Boston  were  under  arms,  and 
even  John  Adams  took  his  turn  with  others,  as  a 
soldier,  at  this  very  building,  coming,  as  he  has  with 
his  own  hand  recorded,  "with  my  musket  and  bayonet, 
my  broad  sword  and  cartridge  box."  It  is  an  inter- 
esting remembrance  of  the  trial  of  the  English 
soldiers,  that  followed,  that  two  of  them  who  were 
actually  convicted  of  manslaughter  escaped  punish- 
ment by  pleading  the  very  ancient  English  plea  of 
"benefit  of  clergy"! — which  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  literal  clergy,  but  only  with  the  ability  to 
write,  which  was  anciently  supposed  to  be  an  accom- 
plishment of  the  clergy  alone,  who  as  a  class  were  im- 
mune from  punishment. 

In  outward  appearance  the  Old  State  House  sug- 
gests a  memory  of  Holland.  It  elusively  but  charm- 
ingly indicates  a  bit  of  Dutch  architecture.  It  has  a 
long  line  of  dormers  on  each  side  of  its  roof,  and  in 
the  center  rises  a  quaint  tower,  in  square-sided  sec- 
tions which  go  up  in  diminishing  sequence  to  a  little 
belfry.  At  either  side  of  the  gable  lines  on  the  high 
and  almost  corbel-like  corners  of  the  facade,  the 
square-shouldered  front  that  faces  out  toward  the 
oncewhile  market-place,  stand  the  lion  and  unicorn, 
effective  and  highly  decorative,  breezy  copies  of  the 
originals  which  were  thrown  down  and  destroyed  in 
the  Revolution,  gayly  gilt  like  the  originals,  and  look- 
ing almost  royally  rampant  as  they  face  each  other 
across  the  central  clock  which  points  out  that  times 
have  changed. 

In  the  center  of  this  fagade  is  a  beautiful  second- 

129 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

story  balcony  of  stone,  in  front  of  a  many-paned  cen- 
tral window  with  curving  pediment.  From  this  bal- 
cony many  a  speech  has  been  delivered  and  many  a 
proclamation  has  been  read,  from  the  time  of  the  early 
Colonial  governors  down,  but  the  long  succession  of 
royal  proclamations  came  finally  to  an  end  when,  on  a 
July  day  in  1776,  to  an  exalted  throng  of  Eevolution- 
ary  citizens  gathered  in  this  open  space  below,  there 
was  read  the  full  text  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, which  had  been  relayed  to  Boston  as  fast  as  a 
galloping  messenger  could  take  it.  "In  the  brave 
days  of  old!" — these  fine  old  familiar  lines  may  well 
be  applied  to  Boston. 

From  this  very  balcony,  ten  years  before  the  read- 
ing of  the  Declaration,  was  proclaimed  the  repeal  of 
the  hated  Stamp  Act,  and  also  from  this  balcony,  at 
the  close  of  the  Eevolution,  the  people  were  told  that 
peace  with  Great  Britain  had  been  made  and  that  full 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  American  Eepublic 
had  been  yielded. 

This  old  building  was  successively  the  Town  House 
of  Boston,  the  Court  House,  the  Province  Court  House 
and  then  the  State  House ;  and  after  the  State  offices 
were  moved  into  the  big  building  on  Beacon  Hill  it 
became  for  a  time  the  City  Hall.  The  building  is  now 
restored,  but  has  not  suffered  the  misfortune  of  be- 
ing over-restored,  and  it  is  given  up  to  the  accumula- 
tion and  display  of  a  collection,  of  fascinating  inter- 
est, of  a  vast  number  of  mementoes  relating  to  early 
days ;  and  like  the  Museo  Civico  of  Venice,  and  others 
of  that  admirable  class,  it  sets  forth,  with  its  memen- 

130 


TO  THE  OLD  STATE  HOUSE 

toes,  the  things  which  represent  the  daily  life  of  long 
ago. 

Among  the  individual  relics  is  a  beautiful  silver 
tankard,  that  was  made  by  Paul  Revere.  It  is  a 
masterpiece  of  silver-smithing,  and  is  so  highly  prized 
that  it  is  held  in  place  by  a  hidden  lock  and  chain,  in 
order  to  keep  it  should  some  thief  break  the  glass  case 
in  an  effort  to  snatch  it  away.  Here,  too,  is  preserved 
one  of  the  original  Revere  prints  of  the  Boston 
Massacre,  which  took  place  under  the  windows  of  this 
building,  and  it  is  so  valued  that  it  is  put  into  a  fire- 
proof safe  every  night.  The  building  also  holds,  in 
one  of  its  corners,  a  little  old  organ,  which  rivals  the 
old  organ  of  the  Park  Street  Church  with  its  "  Amer- 
ica," for  this  in  the  Old  State  House  was  one  at 
which  the  stately  old  tune  "  Coronation"  was  com- 
posed and  on  which  it  was  first  played ;  it  is  an  organ 
with  lead  pipes  and  is  still  playable  and  of  excellent 
tone. 

For  a  building  which  outwardly  does  not  appear 
large,  and  which  is  really  not  large,  there  is  in  the  in- 
terior an  astonishing  effect  of  amplitude.  In  this  re- 
spect it  is  a  marvel. 

There  are  various  meeting  rooms  in  the  building, 
each  of  old-fashioned  dignity,  and  in  particular  the 
fine  big  room,  with  its  noble  spaciousness,  that  is  still 
known  as  the  Council  Room,  as  it  was  in  the  long  ago 
time  when  the  royal  governors,  richly  appareled,  sat 
here  in  formal  state  in  conference  with  their  coun- 
cilors. It  is  a  room  with  twin  fireplaces  and  big  re- 
cessed windows  and  fine  cornice  and  charming  wain- 

131 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 


scoting,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  John  Han- 
cock was  here  inaugurated  governor. 

It  is  astonishing  what  a  degree  of  beauty,  what  an 
amount  of  dignity,  the  earliest  American  architects 
were  able  to  secure  in  their  public  buildings,  and  this 
in  Boston  may  compare  honorably  with  the  best. 
There  is  the  old  Maryland  State  House  in  Annapolis ; 
there  is  the  one-time  State  House,  Independence  Hall, 
in  Philadelphia ;  and  there  is  the  Old  State  House  here 
in  Boston ;  all  of  them  pre-Eevolutionary  buildings  of 
practically  the  same  period,  and  all  of  immense  dig- 
nity and  distinction.  The  three  are  of  very  different 
appearance  from  each  other  but  they  are  alike  in 
continuing  to  be  worthy  points  of  pilgrimage  for 
Americans  and  in  having  direct  connection  with  im- 
portant events  of  the  past. 


on  i.u 


"Lflllllil. 


CHAPTER  XII 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE   WATEKSIDE 


EAR  the  Old  State  House  and, 
like  it,  tucked  in  among  big 
office  buildings,  you  come  unex- 
pectedly upon  a  broad,  plump, 
portly,  comfortable,  restful 
building,  with  an  aspect  of  age 
as  well  as  this  aspect  of  ease, 
and  you  search  elusively  for 
words  to  define  its  impression, 
and  you  know  that  the  right  phrase  has  come  when 
you  hear  it  called  the  Cradle  of  Liberty;  for  it  is  a 
building  that  gives  a  comfortable  old-fashioned  im- 
pression of  a  comfortable  old-fashioned  cradle — al- 
though this  is  not  what  gave  it  its  cradle  cognomen, 
but  the  fact  that  within  its  walls  the  fiery  orators  of 
pre-Revolutionary  days  made  their  most  eloquent  ap- 
peals for  liberty. 

It  is  a  distinguished  looking  building,  with  its  dig- 
nified regularity  of  windows,  and  the  good  old-fash- 
ioned dignity  of  its  long  sides,  and  its  interesting 
round-topped  tower.  It  is  twice  as  large  as  it  used 
to  be — as  Boston  has  grown  so  this  cradle  has  natu- 
rally grown—but  in  doubling  its  length  and  increasing 

133 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

its  height  it  lost  none  of  its  good  old-fashioned  sym- 
metry, for  the  great  Bulfinch  undertook  the  work  of 
enlargement  and  gave  it  his  utmost  care. 

The  building  was  the  gift,  in  1742,  of  a  public- 
spirited  citizen  named  Peter  Faneuil,  who  gave  the 
money  for  it  because  he  knew  that  Boston  needed  not 
only  a  good  hall  but  a  market-place  to  take  the  place 
of  the  earlier  market,  at  the  Old  State  House ;  and  a 
market-place  was  accordingly  established  in  the  lower 
floor.  The  building  was  burned  a  few  years  later, 
and  promptly  rebuilt,  and  the  final  enlargement  that 
we  now  see  was  made  a  little  more  than  a  century  ago. 

The  hall  itself,  above  the  public  market,  is  never 
rented,  but  is  forever  to  be  used  freely  by  the  people 
whenever  they  wish  to  meet  together  to  discuss  pub- 
lic affairs;  and  this  alone  would  make  the  building 
proudly  notable.  And  many  a  great  man,  and  many 
a  man  who  was  deeply  in  earnest  even  if  not  great, 
has  spoken  in  this  hall.  And  it  is  still  used  freely 
for  the  public  meetings  of  to-day. 

The  meeting  hall,  almost  square,  has  a  right-angled 
arrangement  of  seats,  and,  with  its  rows  of  Doric 
columns,  is  quite  distinguished.  And  one  notices  that 
a  winding  stairway  leads  down  from  the  very  floor 
of  the  speaker's  platform  and  wonders  if  it  is  to  facili- 
tate the  entrance  of  popular  speakers  in  case  of  a 
great  crowd,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  facilitate  the 
hasty  exit  of  the  unpopular !  One  notices,  too,  that 
the  balcony  has  peculiar  effectiveness  of  proportion, 
adding  much  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  entire  hall, 
and  further  notices,  as  an  additional  point  on  the 

134 


FANEUIL    HALL   AND    QUINCY    MARKET 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATEESIDE 

part  of  Bulfinch,  that  this  comes  from  his  having  made 
the  space  above  the  gallery  a  little  higher  than  the 
space  below,  although  the  first  impression  is  to  the  con- 
trary. It  is  the  same  idea,  carried  out  here  in  simple 
wood,  in  early  America,  on  a  small  scale,  that  the  great 
Giotto  carried  out  so  splendidly  on  a  large  scale  in  his 
tower  at  Florence. 

The  great  painting  behind  the  speaker's  platform 
is  fittingly  a  painting  of  a  great  American  oratorical 
scene,  for  it  represents  Webster,  in  the  United  States 
Senate,  delivering  his  celebrated  reply  to  Hayne. 
Webster  himself  has  spoken  here  in  this  hall  just  as 
all  the  famous  orators  of  New  England  have  spoken 
here,  and  here  were  held  some  most  momentous  early 
meetings,  including  that  which,  several  years  before 
Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill,  stated  the  rights  of  Amer- 
ica so  plainly  and  imperatively  as  always  to  be  held 
by  the  British  to  mark  the  real  beginning  of  the 
Eevolution. 

The  paintings  of  notables  that  hang  about  the  walls 
are  to  quite  an  extent  copies,  but  what  is  believed  to 
be  an  original  Gilbert  Stuart  is  the  big  painting  of 
Washington,  who  is  represented  as  about  to  mount  his 
horse,  at  Dorchester  Heights.  This  painting,  how- 
ever, would  not  have  been  made  by  Stuart  had  it  not 
been  for  a  blacksmith !  For  it  seems  that  a  wealthy 
citizen  wished  to  pay  for  a  painting  of  Washington, 
to  be  hung  in  this  hall,  and  the  town  meeting  was 
about  to  decide  to  give  the  commission  to  a  certain 
Winstanley,  when  the  blacksmith  interposed  his  ob- 
jection.   This  Winstanley,  a  painter  of  no  originality, 

135 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

had  worked  up  quite  a  business  in  copying  the  Wash- 
ingtons  of  Stuart,  getting  the  idea  of  doing  so  from 
the  fact  that  Stuart's  Washingtons  had  frankly  been 
copied  and  adapted  by  Stuart  himself — which  was  a 
very  different  matter.  Washington  himself,  after  sit- 
ting to  Stuart,  had  freely  and  knowingly  accepted  a 
copy,  by  Stuart,  of  the  painting  that  had  been  made 
from  the  sittings,  and  the  original  itself  is  now  in  the 
Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts.  The  only  other  Wash- 
ington that  was  painted  by  Stuart  with  his  great  sub- 
ject personally  before  him  was  what  is  known  as  the 
Lansdowne  portrait,  which  journeyed  long  ago  to 
England.  Whenever,  for  years,  Stuart  needed  money 
— which  was  often  I — he  painted  a  Washington  for 
somebody,  by  copying  or  adapting  from  his  own  work. 
Winstanley  knew  of  this,  for  there  was  no  secrecy 
about  it,  and  those  who  got  these  Washingtons  from 
Stuart  knew  that  they  were  copies  or  replicas,  but  that 
they  were  Stuart's  own  replicas;  they  were  the  re- 
sults of  the  great  artist's  personal  study  of  his  great 
model ;  whereas  the  copies  of  Stuart  that  Winstanley 
made  and  sold,  one  of  which  made  its  way  as  a  verita- 
ble Stuart  to  the  White  House,  and  was  picturesquely 
taken  out  of  its  frame  by  Dolly  Madison  to  save 
it  on  the  approach  of  the  British,  were  in  no  proper 
sense  Stuarts.  Yet  when  Faneuil  Hall  was  to  have  its 
painting  of  Washington  it  was  about  to  be  decided  to 
buy  a  copy  from  the  ready  Winstanley !  And  it  was 
at  this  point  that  the  blacksmith,  who  is  remembered 
only  as  a  man  of  the  North  End,  arose  and  vehe- 
mently opposed  the  idea,  declaring  that  to  procure  a 

136 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATERSIDE 

copy  of  Gilbert  Stuart  made  by  some  one  else  would 
be  a  lasting  disgrace  when  Gilbert  Stuart  himself  was 
actually  living  in  the  city.  At  that,  Stuart  was 
promptly  commissioned  to  paint  a  Washington  for 
Faneuil  Hall.  And  it  is  a  pleasant  recollection  that 
Edward  Everett,  in  his  eulogy  of  Lafayette,  delivered 
in  this  hall,  electrified  his  hearers  by  suddenly  turning 
to  this  portrait  of  Washington  and  exclaiming: 
11 Speak,  glorious  Washington!  Break  the  long  si- 
lence of  that  votive  canvas ! ' ' 

From  time  to  time,  there  have  been  gatherings  here 
not  only  for  political  objects  or  to  record  grievances, 
but  for  social  ends,  and  one  such  was  a  meeting  at 
which  General  Gage,  the  royal  governor,  at  a  time 
when  he  knew  that  the  Port  Act  was  about  to  ruin  the 
commerce  and  business  of  the  town,  rose  and  proposed 
a  toast  "To  the  prosperity  of  Boston"!  And  an- 
other was  the  ball  given  here,  some  three-quarters  of 
a  century  ago,  in  honor  of  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  at 
which  time  Faneuil  Hall  and  the  adjoining  Quincy 
Market,  which  was  long  ago  built  to  meet  the  growing 
market  needs  of  the  city  and  whose  gable  faces  the 
gable  of  Faneuil  Hall,  were  connected  by  a  temporary 
bridge  and  both  buildings  were  aglow  with  light  and 
thronged  with  guests.  Quincy  Market  is  itself  535 
feet  long  and  covers  27,000  square  feet  of  land. 

Another  reminder  of  Faneuil  Hall  came  to  me  in 
Windsor,  England,  recently,  for  in  an  out-of-the-way 
corner  of  that  old  town,  near  the  foot  of  a  picturesque 
and  almost  mysterious  stairway  which  leads  down 
from  the  huge  castle  on  its  height  to  a  postern-door, 

137 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

I  noticed  a  house  with  a  tablet  upon  it.  Something 
led  me  to  cross  the  street  to  read,  and  I  was  interested 
to  find  that  it  was  the  home  of  Eobert  Keayne,  who 
left  old  Windsor  for  Boston  and  founded  in  this  new 
world  the  Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery  Company, 
the  oldest  military  organization  in  America.  And 
how  old  it  makes  this  country  seem !  For  Keayne  was 
born  before  the  settlement  of  Boston,  before  even  the 
settlement  of  Plymouth,  and  he  founded  the  artillery 
company  here  in  Boston  in  1637,  and  the  upper  por- 
tion of  Faneuil  Hall  is  used  as  its  armory. 

Keayne  was  only  a  tailor  over  in  England,  and  it 
used  to  be  an  English  saying  that  it  takes  several 
tailors  to  make  a  man,  but  Keayne,  coming  to  America, 
showed  that  the  English  saying  does  not  apply  on  this 
side  of  the  ocean,  for  he  certainly  was  a  man  of  capac- 
ity and  affairs,  a  man  who  did  very  much  to  establish 
the  foundations  of  early  Boston  on  a  strong  basis. 
That  his  will,  written  with  his  own  hand,  and  dispos- 
ing of  some  four  thousand  pounds — quite  a  fortune 
for  those  days — covered  158  folio  pages,  and  that  it  is 
said  to  be  the  longest  will  on  record,  at  least  in  New 
England,  is  but  one  of  the  side-lights  on  an  interest- 
ing personality ;  but  the  most  interesting  thing  he  did 
was  to  found  his  artillery  company,  and  he  did  this 
because  he  was  a  member  of  an  old  artillery  company 
in  London.  Any  man  deserves  to  be  remembered  who 
puts  in  motion  something  that  remains  prominently 
in  the  public  eye  for  almost  three  centuries ;  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  reason  why  his  organization  should  not 
continue  for  centuries  more. 

138 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATEESIDE 

Down  by  the  big  and  busy  South  Station  which, 
when  it  was  opened  in  1899,  was  said  to  be  the  largest 
railway  terminal  in  the  world  and  which  still  claims 
to  be  first  in  the  number  of  persons  using  it  daily,  one 
does  not  expect  to  find  anything  connected  with  the 
Boston  of  the  past ;  as  you  walk  there,  you  think  only 
of  the  rumble  and  thunder  of  present-day  business,  for 
the  streets  are  thronged  with  trolley  cars  and  heavy 
trucks  and  the  sidewalks  are  crowded  with  busy  busi- 
ness men,  and  elevated  trains  hurtle  by  on  their  spid- 
ery trestles. 

But  you  go  on  for  a  little  beside  the  elevated,  on  At- 
lantic Avenue,  and  your  attention  is  attracted  by  a 
bronze  tablet,  set  into  a  building  at  one  of  the  busiest 
corners,  and  something  draws  you  to  read  it,  and  you 
find  yourself  deeply  rewarded.  Ordinarily,  in  these 
modern  days,  one  does  not  stop  to  read  tablets  of  the 
past  on  buildings  of  the  present ;  one  likes  to  look  at 
buildings  of  the  past  and  to  read  of  the  actions  of  the 
past,  and  it  is  likely  to  be  rather  uninteresting  to  look 
at  a  place  which  is  merely  the  site  of  a  happening  and 
which  is  now  covered  with  something  which  has  no  re- 
lation to  that  happening.  But  this  tablet  is  one  of  the 
exceedingly  worth  while  exceptions.  At  the  top  is  the 
figure  of  a  full-rigged,  old-time  ship,  and  beneath  the 
ship  you  read  that  this  tablet  marks  the  spot  where 
formerly  stood  Griffin's  Wharf;  and  lest  you  forget 
what  Griffin's  Wharf  was,  the  tablet  goes  on  to  explain 
that  here  lay  moored,  on  December  16,  1773,  three 
British  ships  with  cargoes  of  tea,  and  that  "to  defeat 
King  George's  trivial  but  tyrannical  tax  of  three  pence 

139 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

a  pound, ' '  about  ninety  citizens  of  Boston,  partly  dis- 
guised as  Indians,  boarded  the  ships  and  threw  the 
cargoes — three  hundred  and  forty-two  chests  in  all — 
into  the  sea,  "and  made  the  world  ring  with  the  pa- 
triotic exploit  of  the  Boston  Tea  Party." 

You  cannot  but  feel  stirred  as  you  stand  here,  and 
the  fact  that  where  the  wharf  stood  and  ships  lay  is 
now  all  solid  ground,  built  up  with  business  blocks, 
does  not  take  away  from  the  sudden  vision  of  the  past 
which  comes  sweeping  over  you.  For  it  was  a  right 
brave  thing  that  those  men  did ;  it  was  an  achievement 
of  tremendous  daring  in  the  face  of  the  power  of  Eng- 
land ;  and  that  the  value  of  the  tea  was  great  added  to 
the  very  real  danger  of  most  severe  punishment:  I 
have  read,  though  it  seems  almost  incredible,  that  the 
tea  was  valued  at  eighteen  thousand  pounds ! 

One  should  not,  however,  enter  this  district  except 
on  a  Sunday.  On  Sundays  all  is  quiet  and  deserted ; 
scarcely  a  single  person  is  met ;  it  is  almost  a  solitude, 
and  it  is  an  excellent  time  to  continue  to  some  of  the 
nearby,  old-time  wharves  which  do  still  represent  the 
old-time  Boston  waterside. 

It  is  but  a  short  walk,  continuing  along  Atlantic 
Avenue,  to  a  big  wharf  which,  although  almost  covered 
with  modern  cargo  sheds,  still  retains  its  ancient  name 
of  India  Wharf.  And  the  wharf  also  retains  the  great 
old  India  Wharf  building,  standing  detached  from  all 
the  modern  shipping  sheds  and  towering  up  to  its 
height  of  seven  stories — really  a  towering  height  in 
early  American  days.  A  big,  brick  structure  it  is, 
built  with  a  broad  center  and  two  broad  wings,  and 

140 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATERSIDE 

giving  a  striking  effect  of  isolation — an  isolation  that 
is  at  the  same  time  both  shabby  and  proud.  The  big 
building  faces  out  toward  the  water  and  gives  a  fine 
air  of  standing  for  the  old  shipping  prosperity  that 
meant  so  much  in  the  early  days  of  Boston ;  and  I  can- 
not remember  a  more  romantic  looking  business  struc- 
ture in  America. 

The  brick,  laid  in  English  bond,  has  mellowed  to  a 
weathered  yellowness.  The  fifty  windows  of  the 
facade  were  originally  shuttered,  but  the  shutters  re- 
main on  only  three,  and  beside  the  others  the  wrought- 
iron  holders  stick  out  like  little  black  prongs.  Some 
of  the  windows  are  arched  with  white  stone ;  here  and 
there  across  the  building's  front  are  remains  of  white 
marble  lines;  a  monster  chimney  stands  above  the 
towering  top  of  the  middle  gable ;  the  two  highest  win- 
dows are  fans,  and  a  shelf  between  these  two,  now 
empty,  up  in  the  pediment,  looks  as  though  it  was 
originally  made  to  hold  some  figure,  probably  that  of 
a  ship ;  and  the  lines  of  the  sash  of  these  two  lofty  fans 
are  like  the  longitude  lines  of  a  globe. 

The  pavement  in  front  of  the  building  is  of  enor- 
mous cobbles  of  granite,  some  of  these  blocks  being  as 
large  as  two  feet  by  one,  and  they  are  just  like  ancient 
pavement  blocks,  such  as  one  is  accustomed  to  think 
of  only  in  old  Italian  cities. 

India  Wharf  and  the  wharves  adjoining  are  not  par- 
allel with  the  shore  line  but  project  in  long  rectangles 
right  out  into  the  water  of  the  harbor.  Long  Wharf, 
near  by,  was  given  its  name  because  at  the  time  it  was 
built  it  was  the  longest  wharf  in  the  country ;  and  be- 

141 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

cause  it  was  so  long,  thus  offering  a  point  of  military 
advantage,  a  battery  used  to  stand  out  there  on  the 
very  end  of  it. 

Central  Wharf  is  also  interesting,  with  its  long  row 
of  old-fashioned  stone  warehouses.  In  fact,  this  en- 
tire region  tells  vividly  of  the  picturesque  early  busi- 
ness years  before  the  great  changes  that  came  with 
railroads. 

T  Wharf — which,  when  you  see  it  on  the  street  sign, 
<(TWf.,"  seems  positively  cryptic — is  picturesque  in 
a  high  degree,  for  old-time-looking,  full-rigged  fishing 
boats,  with  rattling  yards  and  ropes,  are  tied  up  along- 
side, and  on  Sundays  immense  nets  are  spread  out  on 
the  wharf,  at  great  length,  with  their  rows  of  cork 
floats.  Sea-gulls  whirl  over  the  wharves  and  the 
water,  and  dart  divingly  for  their  food,  and  cry  their 
harshly  wailing  note ;  and  on  Sundays  the  fishermen 
and  their  friends,  Americans  and  Italians,  congregate 
about  these  boats  and  the  wharf;  and  some  of  the 
fishermen — or  perhaps  they  are  dock  hands  or  market 
porters — make  their  homes  in  the  oddest  of  fleets,  a 
covey  of  perhaps  a  score  of  little  mastless  boats, 
painted  blue  or  green,  and  anchored  close  to  shore  in 
a  space  between  two  piers.  And  everywhere  is  the 
permeative  smell  of  fish.  And  often  the  close-gath- 
ered fishing  boats  mass  picturesquely  against  the  sky 
a  great  tangle  of  masts  and  ropes  and  spars. 

Many  of  the  buildings  among  these  wharves  stand 
on  piling,  and  are  partly  over  the  water,  and  the 
wharves  themselves  are  built  of  enormous  blocks  of 
stone,  or  of  enormous  timbers.    In  one  place  I  noticed 

142 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATERSIDE 

a  long  stretch  of  black  beach  beneath  overhanging 
flooring,  and  it  led  back  in  strange,  long,  tunnel-like 
spaces  among  the  wooden  supports,  into  the  distant 
darkness;  and  all  seemed  whispering  of  romance  or 
crime. 

Here  one  sees  the  long-forgotten  sign  of  "Wharf- 
inger"; and  there  are  little  shops  that  sell  all  sorts 
of  sailors'  supplies:  ferocious  knives  with  blades  a 
foot  and  a  half  long,  fish  forks  with  handles  as  long  as 
hay  forks  but  with  only  a  single  prong,  fog  horns, 
anchors,  hooks,  woolen  "wristers,"  oil  skin  clothing, 
and  "sou 'westers"  that  have  come  straight  out  of 
Winslow  Homer's  paintings. 

The  sign,  too,  of  "hake  sounds"  is  remindful  that 
this  city  of  cod  has  also  many  another  fish,  for  one 
finds  there  are  the  haddock,  the  mackerel  and  the  her- 
ring ;  the  scrod — which  is  really  a  little  cod,  although 
even  Bostonians  cannot  always  tell  when  the  scrod  be- 
comes a  cod  or  when  a  cod  is  still  a  scrod.  There  are 
the  swordfish  and  spikefish ;  there  are  cusk  and  tinkers 
and  eels;  there  are  butterfish,  flounders  and  perch; 
there  are  halibut  and  chicken-halibut ;  there  are  blue- 
fish,  sea-trout,  bass  and  scup;  there  are  oysters,  lob- 
sters, clams  and  the  giant  sea-clams  so  delectable  in 
New  England  chowder ;  there  are  sculpin,  tautog  and 
quahog. 

On  Commercial  Wharf  is  a  row  of  uniform  old 
buildings  of  dignified  solidity,  all  broad  gabled  and  of 
stone,  with  rows  of  little  dormers  like  hencoops  on 
their  high  slate  roofs.  When  this  wharf  was  built, 
about  a  century  ago,  it  was  by  far  the  finest  of  the 

143 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

waterside  blocks  of  buildings,  and  men  whose  ships 
traded  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  the  Spanish  Main, 
to  India  and  China,  to  the  North  of  Europe,  flocked  to 
it  to  make  it  their  headquarters.  And  old-timers  love 
to  tell  that,  in  their  boyhood,  old-timers  of  that  period 
loved  to  tell  them,  that  in  those  early  days  of  Ameri- 
can commerce  the  skillful  captains  of  the  ships  would 
beat  in  under  full  sail,  without  assistance,  up  to  these 
very  wharves. 

The  general  district  adjacent  to  these  old-time 
wharves  is  mostly  given  over  to  the  modern,  but  here 
and  there  are  still  to  be  seen  quaint  roof  lines,  and 
old-fashioned  gables,  and  odd  street-corner  lines,  rem- 
iniscent of  the  days  that  have  gone.  There  is  consid- 
erable, in  fact,  to  remind  one  of  old-time  business 
London,  including  the  many  narrow  passages  and 
alley-ways  that  go  diving  here  and  there  among  the 
buildings.  Not  far  away,  too,  is  Fort  Hill  Park,  a 
level  space,  grassed  and  sparsely-treed,  in  the  heart 
of  modern  business  buildings,  and  retaining  the  circu- 
lar shape  remindful  of  its  past :  for  here  in  early  days 
rose  a  hill  a  hundred  feet  in  height,  and  where  it  was 
cut  partly  down  its  slopes  were  covered  with  fashion- 
able homes — Gilbert  Stuart  chose  his  residence  here — 
and  at  length  it  was  entirely  leveled  into  its  present 
simple  form. 

Up  a  little  distance  from  the  waterside,  on  Custom 
House  Street,  is  the  old  Custom  House  of  Boston, 
sadly  altered  in  looks  from  its  early  days,  shorn  of  all 
distinction,  and  now  showing  a  front  of  extraordinary 
plainness,  with  a  sign  denoting  that  it  is  a  "Boarding 

144 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATERSIDE 

and  Baiting  Stable" — the  u baiting"  being  itself  a 
queer  reminder  of  a  vanished  time. 

The  old  Custom  House  building  is  worth  while  mak- 
ing the  few  minutes'  necessary  pilgrimage  to  see,  for 
here  the  collector  of  the  port  was  Bancroft  the  histo- 
rian, and  one  of  his  assistants  was  a  certain  young  man 
of  the  name  of  Hawthorne!  Bancroft  had  been  at- 
tracted by  some  of  Hawthorne's  early  short  stories, 
and  for  that  reason  had  offered  him  a  position  here. 

Hawthorne  was  rather  bored  by  the  work;  he  was 
gauger  and  weigher,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  given 
to  the  duties  of  these  humble  offices  the  hard  work  that 
a  certain  other  writer,  named  Robert  Burns,  devoted 
to  similar  duties.  In  fact,  Hawthorne  seems  always 
to  have  considered  public  office  a  rather  tiresome  sort 
of  thing  to  attend  to,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  gave 
certain  financial  advantages  not  to  be  scorned  by  nov- 
elists. I  have  somewhere  read  his  own  description  of 
his  work  here  in  Boston,  and  he  seemed  to  find  the 
heat  and  the  flies  of  the  waterside  most  unpleasant; 
with  nothing  of  offsetting  pleasantness.  Boston,  at 
that  time,  had  not  discovered  him — his  recognition  had 
been  very  slight. 

Somewhere  I  have  read  a  brief  description  of  him 
at  this  time,  and  it  mentioned  the  delightful  fact, 
which  at  once  sets  Hawthorne  before  us  as  a  likable 
and  very  human  man,  that  he  loved  to  follow  brass 
bands !  Which  amusing  habit  doubtless  explains  why, 
over  in  England,  he  notes  in  his  journal  that  he  had 
just  seen  march  by  the  regiment  of  which  George 
Washington  was  once  enrolled  as  an  officer ! 

145 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Close  by  this  old  building — for  one  continually  sees 
how  near  together  are  most  of  the  important  or  inter- 
esting things  in  Boston — is  the  new  Custom  House,  an 
extremely  notable  structure,  towering  up  to  the  height 
of  498  feet  above  the  sidewalk ;  and  the  building  does 
literally  tower,  for  it  may  be  said  to  be  all  tower! 
Years  ago,  a  dignified  structure,  with  pillared  fronts, 
was  built,  in  the  form  of  a  Greek  cross,  to  replace  the 
old  building  of  Bancroft  and  Hawthorne,  but  the  busi- 
ness of  the  city  gradually  outgrew  it,  and  an  appropri- 
ation was  made  by  Congress  for  larger  quarters. 
Beal  estate,  however,  had  so  gone  up  in  price  in  Bos- 
ton that  the  appropriation  was  not  sufficient  to  buy 
land  as  well  as  to  put  up  a  building,  and  so  the  expedi- 
ent was  hit  upon  of  running  up  the  building  itself  into 
the  air!  The  pillared  fronts,  with  their  thirty-two 
great  Doric  columns,  still  remain,  but  the  entire  center 
has  risen,  splendidly  dominating  in  its  immense  height, 
making  a  tower  which,  though  not  quite  beautiful,  can 
be  seen  for  miles  in  all  directions.  The  city  of  Boston 
forbids  the  erection  of  any  building  within  its  limits 
higher  than  125  feet,  but  the  United  States,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  fact  that  it  owns  as  a  National  Govern- 
ment the  land  upon  which  any  of  its  public  buildings 
stands,  simply  ignored  the  Boston  restriction  and  went 
right  ahead  with  this  higher  tower.  And  the  people 
of  Boston,  themselves,  are  not  displeased,  although 
this  was  done  in  spite  of  them ;  in  fact,  they  say  that  it 
gives  a  beacon-like  effect  to  the  city  which  rather 
matches  the  generally  desired  tone.  At  the  same  time, 
it  fits  in  with  the  beacon  idea  of  the  early  days,  and 

146 


FANEUIL  HALL  AND  THE  WATEKSIDE 

the  fact  that  old  Boston  of  England  is  also  dominated 
by  a  tower  which  can  be  plainly  seen  for  miles  and 
miles  across  the  fenland  does  certainly  add  to  the 
sense  of  appropriateness.  And  that  the  Custom 
House  stands  so  supreme  over  everything  else  in  Bos- 
ton, that  it  so  dominates,  is  but  natural  after  all — for 
in  Boston  it  is  natural  for  Custom  to  dominate ! 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE   STREETS   OF   BOSTON 


|VEN  Boston,  in  spite  of  its 
being  an  intellectual  city — 
and  one  need  never  prove 
that  Boston  is  intellectual, 
for  Bostonians  stand  pleas- 
antly ready  to  admit  it — 
sufficiently  succumbed  to 
mid- Victorian  standards  of 
building  as  to  put  up  a 
goodly  number  of  architec- 
tural ineptitudes,  one  of  the  sad  examples  being 
the  Post-Office,  which  was  so  highly  thought  of 
at  the  time  of  its  construction  as  to  draw  such 
encomiums  as  the  following  from  an  intelligent 
observer  of  about  1880:  "Its  style  of  architecture 
is  grand  in  the  extreme.  It  is  a  building  of  elegant 
finish.  Its  roof  is  an  elaboration  of  Louvre  and  Man- 
sard styles."  Really,  beyond  this  nothing  need  be 
said.  Yet  this  building  points  out  the  irony  of  fate, 
for  in  its  granite  prodigiousness  it  did  a  vastly  better 
thing  for  Boston  than  many  a  more  beautiful  building 
would  have  done,  for  it  stood  as  an  absolute  barrier 
in  the  great  fire  of  1872,  completely  stopping  the 

148 


THE  STREETS  OF  BOSTON 

frightful  rush  of  flames  in  its  direction ;  without  this 
unbeautiful  building  the  terrible  record  of  767  build- 
ings burned,  67  acres  swept  over,  and  a  money  loss  of 
seventy-five  millions,  would  have  been  vastly  worse. 

That  fire  destroyed  many  a  picturesque  landmark, 
but  the  city  still  retains  the  old-time  interest  that 
comes  from  narrow  and  crooked  streets.  '  *  The  street 
called  Straight"  was  certainly  not  a  Boston  street. 
In  its  whimsical  complexity,  the  city  is  still  as  notable 
as  when  the  Marquis  de  Chastellux  wrote  that  he 
thought  this  feature  exemplified  "la  liberte." 

In  the  old  section  of  the  city  there  are  still  to  be 
found  not  only  crooked  streets  and  unexpected  angles 
but  great  numbers  of  narrow  passages  and  blind  ways, 
and  there  are  little  court-yards  and  streets  that  end  in 
stone  steps — all  giving  a  highly  satisfying  sense  of  the 
olden  days,  for  it  is  mainly  on  account  of  the  olden 
days  that  one  likes  to  come  to  Boston.  One  long  slit 
of  a  passage,  nearly  six  feet  wide,  running  close  be- 
tween business  blocks,  is  an  " avenue,"  and  I  know  it 
is  an  avenue  because  there  is  a  sign  on  it  to  that  effect, 
although  otherwise  I  should  never  have  suspected  it 
of  bearing  such  a  large  title.  One  can  burrow  across 
much  of  the  old  city  through  narrow  passages,  and 
here  and  there  it  is  not  only  the  metaphorical  burrow- 
ing of  narrow  ways,  but  the  literal  burrowing  of  some 
public  passage  through  and  under  some  pile  of  build- 
ings. One  may  even  find  extraordinarily  narrow  pas- 
sages in  such  a  comparatively  new  section  as  between 
West  and  Temple  Streets  and  Temple  and  Winter ; 
and  one  may  follow  narrow  ways,  one  after  another, 

149 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

from  the  Granary  to  Faneuil  Hall,  and  in  many  an- 
other place.  Of  no  other  American  city  could  one 
say,  as  Holmes  said  of  Boston,  that  he  used  to  "bore" 
through  it,  knowing  it  as  the  old  inhabitant  of  a 
Cheshire  knows  his  cheese;  and  "bore"  is  precisely 
the  right  word.  Some  of  the  passages  are  so  narrow 
that,  standing  in  the  middle,  one  may  put  an  elbow 
against  each  wall.  And  these  network  passages  are 
not  back-ways  for  refuse  and  ashes,  but  are  steadily 
and  freely  used  by  men  and  women  as  public  pathways 
and  shortcuts. 

After  all,  as  to  Boston  streets  in  general,  one  re- 
members that  it  has  finely  been  said  that,  although 
the  city  is  full  of  crooked  little  streets,  it  has  opened 
and  kept  open  more  turnpikes  that  lead  straight  to 
free  thought,  free  speech  and  free  deeds  than  has  any 
other  city. 

The  street  pavements,  one  regrets  to  notice,  are 
likely  to  be  rough  and  the  sidewalks  narrow,  and  in 
muddy  weather  the  result  is  what  would  naturally  be 
expected  from  such  a  combination,  for  in  no  other  city 
have  I  noticed  such  splashing  of  house  fronts  and  store 
windows  with  mud  as  in  some  parts  of  Boston.  In 
the  medieval  streets  in  old  European  cities  conditions 
are  the  same  except  that  there  is  little  traffic  to  speak 
of.  Had  Macaulay  ever  been  in  America  one  would 
have  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  inspiration  of  his 
lines,  telling  that  to  the  highest  turret  tops  was 
dashed  the  yellow  foam,  came  right  from  Boston. 
And  the  motorist  must  know  his  Boston  exceptionally 
well  to  be  able  to  make  his  way  about  on  streets  whose 

150 


THE  STEEETS  OF  BOSTON 

pavement  is  even  measurably  smooth.  The  cobbles 
at  the  sides  of  the  Beacon  Hill  streets  are  obviously 
excellent  as  checks  to  sliding  in  slippery  weather,  but 
the  cobbles  in  other  parts  of  the  city  are  not  so  under- 
standable, and  the  holes  and  roughnesses  that  have 
nothing  to  do  with  cobbles  are  understandable  even 
less.  By  (l cobbles,' '  it  may  be  added,  is  meant  not 
merely  the  rough  Belgian  blocks  which  are  to  be  found 
here  and  there  in  Boston  as  in  other  cities,  but  round- 
top  beach  stones,  little  boulders,  extremely  uneven  in 
surface  and  polished  by  the  hoofs  of  many  generations 
of  horses.  But  there  are  splendid  parkway  roads  in 
Boston,  and  some  splendidly  smooth  roads  leading  out 
to  some  of  the  suburbs ;  altogether,  Boston  has  some  of 
the  very  best  and  some  of  the  very  worst  roads  that 
I  have  ever  seen  in  a  city.  And  frequently,  on  account 
of  inefficient  street-cleaning,  there  is  achieved  an  in- 
credible dustiness. 

The  hand-organ  is  still  a  common  survival  in  Bos- 
ton streets,  and  there  are  also  survivals  of  street  cries, 
in  at  least  the  older  and  still  American  parts  of  the 
city,  of  a  kind  that  have  nearly  vanished  from  most 
other  large  cities;  and  these  cries  quite  fulfill  the 
requisite  of  being  practically  unintelligible  except  to 
the  ear  of  custom.  Some  one  wishing  to  rival  the 
familiar  prints  of  i '  Old  London  Cries ' '  might  still  get 
out  a  series  of  " Boston  Cries"  and  date  it  in  the 
twentieth  century.  The  humble  soapgrease  man  still 
goes  about  with  greasy  cart  and  gives  his  humble  soap- 
grease  cry ;  the  strident  call  of  the  eager  fishman  is  a 
familiar  possession  of  the  city,  though  within  my  own 

151 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

memory  the  conch-shell  of  the  mackerel  man  has  van- 
ished ;  the  varied  cries  of  the  men  with  fruit  still  rend 
the  air,  and  these  men  have  usually  carts,  with  horses, 
which  they  drive  by  at  a  perpetual  quickened  walk, 
and  the  insistent  and  urgent  voices  seem  to  declare 
that  the  fruit  must  be  bought  instantly;  perhaps  the 
iceman  is  the  best  of  all,  for  he  wails  and  trails  his 
words  with  a  wonderful,  lengthening  "  ee-ice,' '  with  a 
poignant  accenting  of  the  final  note ;  and,  as  I  write, 
one  seems  even  more  interesting  than  the  iceman,  for 
I  hear  a  cry  that  is  not  only  a  veritable  survival  of 
the  past,  but  one  which  has  quite  disappeared,  so  far 
as  I  know,  from  other  cities — the  cry  of  the  ragman, 
going  along  with  his  bag  over  his  shoulder  and  his 
scale  in  his  hand,  with  his  quietly  murmuring  cry  of 
"Bags,  an'  oP  clothes''! 

And  in  line  with  the  street  cries  of  Boston  is  a  street 
sound  that  is  curiously  remarkable — the  sound  of 
bells  that  are  strung  on  horses  drawing  the  more 
primitive  kinds  of  delivery  wagon,  or  tied  directly  on 
the  wagon  thills.  I  do  not  remember  any  other  Ameri- 
can city  where  horses  or  wagons  are  belled.  Nor  do 
I  refer  to  sleighbells,  which  are  a  different  matter  alto- 
gether. I  mean  bells  that  go  ringing  or  jangling  as 
the  four-wheeled  vehicles  move  through  the  streets; 
and  it  gives  a  most  odd  effect.  The  custom  probably 
began  as  a  measure  of  safety  in  approaching  the  fre- 
quent intersections  of  the  narrow  streets ;  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  gondola  men  of  Venice  utter  their 
long-drawn-out  warning  cry  as  they  approach  the  in- 
tersections of  the  narrow  canals. 

152 


THE  STEEETS  OF  BOSTON 

Sleighbells  in  winter  are  common;  indeed,  Boston 
is  very  much  of  a  winter  city,  as  is  shown  by  the  swift 
appearance  of  sleighs  and  bob-sleds  after  a  snow,  the 
swift  handling  of  the  snow- shoveling  problem,  the 
myriad  little  avalanches  from  the  sloping  roofs  when 
a  thaw  comes,  the  skating  on  the  Charles  and  on  the 
lake  in  the  Public  Garden  and  on  the  pond  in  the  Com- 
mon, and  the  free  and  untrammeled  coasting  of  boys 
and  girls  down  the  paths  and  the  hill-slopes  of  the 
Common.  And  conservative  ladies  who  still  avoid 
limousines  and  pin  their  social  faith  to  carriages — the 
"kerridges"  of  Holmes,  with  a  "pole  and  a  pair" — 
have  the  coupe  top  detached  from  the  wheels  and 
slung  on  an  iron  frame,  with  graceful  runners,  and, 
thus  vehicularly  equipped,  sleigh  forth  in  undis- 
turbed exclusiveness  to  make  their  afternoon  calls. 

It  so  happens  that  I  have  rarely  noticed  a  policeman 
upon  the  Common,  though  on  inquiry  I  have  learned 
that  always  there  is  supposedly  a  detail  of  two  police- 
men there ;  perhaps  it  is  only  a  fancy,  that  the  general 
sense  of  freedom  as  to  the  Common  keeps  it  unwatched 
ground.  It  seems  quite  unwatched,  even  when  there 
is  skating  on  the  big  pond  before  it  has  frozen 
strongly,  and  when,  after  freezing  and  melting,  there 
are  holes  in  the  ice  and  gaps  of  black  water  along  the 
edges.  I  one  day  asked  a  policeman  on  Tremont 
Street  about  this,  for  I  was  accustomed  to  see  in  other 
cities  the  red  ball  and  supervision,  for  skating,  but  in- 
stead of  saying  that  the  water  was  not  deep  enough  to 
be  dangerous  except  for  a  cold  wetting,  he  said 
thoughtfully:  "Why,  no — there  ain't  no  rule  about  it 

153 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

— the  boys  go  on  when  they  want  to."  Then  a  slow 
smile  crept  over  his  face.  "I  suppose  it  ain't  likely 
they  will  go  near  the  holes,"  he  said.  It  really  seems 
as  if  this  freedom  on  the  Common  has  come  down 
without  question  since  that  pre-Revolutionary  time 
when  the  boys  of  Boston  went  to  the  British  General  in 
command  and  complained  of  the  spoiling  of  their 
slides  and  had  their  claim  acknowledged. 

The  street  signs  of  Boston  are  explanatory,  exposi- 
tory, admonitory,  advisory.  I  have  even  seen,  but 
rarely,  the  blunt  "Keep  off,"  but  there  is  more  likeli- 
hood of  finding  such  a  courteously  suggestive  sign  as 
"Newly  seeded  ground."  And  as  Boston  takes  it  for 
granted  that  the  people  within  its  gates  wish  every- 
thing to  be  reasonably  done,  you  will  see  "Uncheck 
your  horses  on  going  up  the  hill,"  or  "Rest  your 
horses";  and  you  will  notice  such  advice  as  "Do  not 
walk  more  than  two  abreast,"  and  "Do  not  stop  in  the 
middle  of  the  sidewalk,"  and  "Do  not  block  the  cross- 
ings. ' ' 

A  kind  of  sign,  rather  exceptionally  rhadamanthine, 
is  seen  at  some  of  the  street  intersections  and  bluntly 
commands  1 l  Do  not  enter  here ' ' ;  and  several  visitors 
have  told  me  that  they  have  actually  gone  clear  around 
such  blocks  so  as  to  enter  at  the  other  end,  to  see  why 
it  was  that  admittance  was  forbidden,  and  that  not  un- 
til then  did  they  realize  that  Bostonians  merely  meant 
to  say  that  it  was  a  one-way  street  for  vehicles,  with 
no  intended  reference  to  pedestrians.  And  a  smile  is 
admissible  when  you  see  a  stairway,  leading  down 
from  a  sidewalk,  marked ' '  To  the  Elevated  " !    In  any 

154 


THE  STEEETS  OF  BOSTON 

other  city  Bostonians  would  see  humor  in  calling  a 
subway  an  elevated,  even  though  it  may  chance  after 
a  while  to  lead  to  an  elevated.  Also,  I  have  been 
directed  in  the  suburbs  to  the  " Subway,' '  where  there 
was  only  a  stair  to  the  elevated.  And  when  you  read, 
in  a  street  car,  that  you  are  "forbidden  to  stand"  on 
the  front  platform,  and  in  the  same  car  that  you  are 
"not  allowed  to  stand' '  on  the  rear  platform,  you 
wonder  just  what  fine  distinction  is  implied. 

The  custom  in  Boston  at  some  corners  is  to  give  not 
only  the  street  names,  but  the  number  of  the  ward  as 
well,  and  a  visitor  to  the  city  told  me  that,  arriving  at 
night  and  starting  out  to  explore  the  city  the  next 
morning,  he  at  once  noticed  Ward  II,  Ward  III,  and 
so  on,  near  his  hotel  and  thought  he  must  be  in  the 
vicinity  of  a  great  Boston  hospital  with  out-lying  hos- 
pital buildings.  And  an  old  Bostonian  assures  me 
that  it  was  not  a  .joke,  but  a  fact,  that  a  Boston  library 
had  a  sign  reading  "Only  low  talk  permitted  in  this 
room" — till  the  newspapers  learned  of  it! 

"Prepayment"  cars  are  a  feature  of  Boston,  and 
you  find  yourself  vaguely  wondering  about  them  until 
you  see  that  they  are  but  the  "Pay  as  you  enter"  cars 
of  other  cities. 

And  all  this  in  a  city  whose  very  street  railway  men 
will  calmly  refer  you  to  "the  next  articulated  car, 
sir,"  and  which  preens  itself  on  such  things  as  say- 
ing that  gloves  are  always  "cleansed"  and  never 
"cleaned" !  which  is  remindful  that  the  men  of  Boston 
do  not  wear  gloves  as  freely  as  do  the  men  of  other 
large  cities  in  the  East;  gloves  are  evidently  looked 

155 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

upon,  by  them,  as  meant  for  cold  weather,  and  not 
until  cold  weather  are  they  donned  generally. 

I  have  noticed  that  the  police  are  a  courteously 
helpful  set  of  men,  never  too  busy  to  answer  questions. 
I  have  even  smiled  to  see  the  traffic  men  at  the  busiest 
crossings  stop  to  answer  carefully  and  distinctly  the 
questions  of  fluttered  folk  even  while  thronging  motor 
cars  come  bearing  down  in  threatening  masses. 

In  the  best  retail  shopping  district,  which  corre- 
sponds with  what  used  to  be  the  ' '  ladies '  mile ' '  in  New 
York,  there  are  many  delightful  specialty  shops  on 
streets  just  off  the  principal  thoroughfares:  little 
shops  which  make  one  think  of  London.  There  are 
lace-shops,  linen-shops,  hat-shops,  tea-shops — the  list 
might  be  extended  indefinitely.  The  heavy  percent- 
age of  candy-shops,  with  their  attractive  windows,  is 
noticeable,  and  one  finds  himself  thinking  that  this 
must  be  due  to  the  influence  of  women — until  he  dis- 
covers that  there  is  also  a  striking  number  of  candy- 
shops  down  in  the  heart  of  the  business  district ! 

Boston  must,  also,  be  an  intensely  flower-loving 
city,  judging  from  the  frequency  of  gorgeous  window 
displays  of  flowers  and  the  great  number  of  shops  that 
sell  not  only  cut  flowers  but  bulbs,  seeds  and  house- 
plants. 

Ask  a  Philadelphian  or  a  New  Yorker  to  show  you 
the  nearest  doctor  and  he  looks  at  the  nearest  house ! 
For  doctors'  signs  are  so  common  in  those  cities  that 
you  think  it  likely  to  see  one  at  any  window.  But  in 
Boston  the  doctors'  signs  are  few  and  far  between, 
and  when  found  they  are  so  small  as  to  be  not  only 

156 


THE  STREETS  OF  BOSTON 

inconspicuous  but  almost  unreadable.  It  would  seem 
as  if  the  bigger  a  doctor's  reputation  the  smaller  his 
sign.  And  to  a  great  extent  doctors  throng  to  office 
buildings. 

The  pharmacists,  in  distinction  from  the  candy 
and  soda  people  who  also  sell  drugs,  are  even  rarer  in 
proportion  than  in  other  American  cities. 

Old-fashioned  terms  or  phrases  are  preserved. 
The  sign  of  " Lobsters  and  Musty  Ale"  is  not  infre- 
quent, and  it  is  still  far  from  impossible  to  find  a 
"Tap";  and  if  one  is  so  old-fashioned  as  to  drive  into 
town  with  a  horse  he  may  still  have  it  "baited,"  as 
old-fashioned  announcements  still  have  it,  at  old- 
fashioned  places. 

And  there  are  still,  in  Boston,  book-shops  that  look 
like  book-shops,  delightful  book-shops  that  attract 
book-buyers  and  book-lovers;  a  type  of  shop  that 
is  passing,  in  some  American  cities,  on  account  of 
the  taking  over  of  the  book  trade  by  department 
stores. 

So  sensitive  is  the  Boston  mind,  in  some  respects, 
that  no  employee  of  any  shop,  or,  in  fact,  any 
employee  of  any  kind,  is  ever  treated  so  harshly  as  to 
be  "discharged";  and  to  be  "fired"  would  be  shud- 
deringly  impossible;  here  in  Boston  a  dismissed  em- 
ployee has  simply  "got  through."  That  is  all.  He 
has  "got  through."  And  with  that  delicate  euphe- 
mism the  incident  and  the  conversation  are  delicately 
but  finally  closed.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  man  has 
resigned  of  his  own  free  will,  or  has  moved  into  a 
higher  sphere  of  influence,  that  is  another  matter,  and 

157 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Bostonian  pains  are  taken  to  make  that  fact  clear. 
But  in  general,  he  has  just  "got  through.' ' 

It  is  impossible  to  think  of  any  street  scene  in  Bos- 
ton without  thinking  of  the  most  Bostonian  feature  of 
all,  the  Boston  bag.  A  plain  leather  bag  it  is,  not 
much  over  a  foot  long  and  about  one  foot  in  height; 
it  has  something  of  the  quality  of  a  valise  and  some- 
thing of  the  quality  of  a  portfolio ;  it  has  a  flat  bottom 
and  two  leather  handles  and  never  closes  with  a  lock 
but  with  a  strap.  It  is  used  by  all  the  men  and  women 
and  girls  and  boys,  it  is  used  by  youth  and  age,  it  is 
used  in  walking  the  streets,  in  shopping,  in  going  to 
school,  in  going  to  business  offices,  it  is  carried  in 
street  cars  and  automobiles,  it  is  used  for  business  and 
for  pleasure,  it  holds  books,  purchases  of  all  sorts, 
skates,  lunches  and  anything;  it  may  even  at  times  be 
empty,  but  it  is  none  the  less  carried.  No  visitor  who 
becomes  fully  impregnated  with  the  Boston  feeling 
ever  leaves  the  city  without  carrying  one  away  with 
him.  It  has  long  been  said  that  the  requisite  pos- 
sessions of  every  true  Bostonian  are  a  Boston  bag,  a 
subscription  to  the  Transcript  and  a  high  moral 
purpose. 

There  is  so  much  of  the  pleasant  in  the  weather  in 
Boston  that  I  do  not  quite  see  why  it  is  so  abused  by 
the  citizens  themselves.  It  is  not  altogether  so  good 
as  in  some  American  cities,  but  it  is  quite  as  good  as 
in  some  others,  even  of  such  as  have  a  better  name 
for  their  weather.  Yet  one  must  admit,  however  re- 
luctantly, that  there  is  an  east  wind,  which  at  times  is 
highly  disagreeable.    It  can  have  such  fierce,  ugly, 

158 


THE  STEEETS  OF  BOSTON 

persistent,  tearing  qualities  that  you  feel  as  if  on  the 
bridge  of  a  liner  with  all  the  Atlantic  pulling  at  you. 
And  it  can  blow  like  a  proof  of  perpetual  motion.  It 
can  be  as  raw  and  chill  and  wet,  too,  as  a  wind  blow- 
ing straight  off  the  Banks ;  and  one  begins  to  see  that 
it  is  not  necessarily  blue  blood  that  gives  blue  noses. 

Although  James  Eussell  Lowell,  Bostonian  and 
Cambridgean  that  he  was,  gave  Boston,  with  a 
subtlety  that  the  city  has  never  yet  realized,  its  crud- 
est weather  tap  by  his  declaration  that  it  is  in  June 
that  "if  ever"  come  perfect  days,  the  perfect  days  are 
many  in  the  course  of  a  year  and  the  really  excellent 
days  are  many  more.  It  seems  as  if  Bostonians  love 
to  find  fault  with  their  weather  just  as  the  people  of 
Edinburgh  like  to  find  fault  with  theirs,  as  a  sort  of 
relief  to  wind-strained  nerves,  but  without  meaning  to 
be  taken  too  literally.  And  yet,  I  remember  a  recent 
September  in  which,  for  several  days,  some  of  the 
Boston  public  schools  were  closed  on  account  of  the 
oppressive  heat,  only  to  be  closed  for  excessive  cold 
the  very  week  after. 

There  are  more  drunken  men  to  be  met  on  Boston 
streets  than  one  sees  in  other  cities,  and  many  of  them 
are  well  dressed;  and  perhaps  the  frequency  of  the 
sight  indicates  that  the  police  do  not  think  it  necessary 
to  be  too  severe  with  men  who  are  uncomfortably  tack- 
ing and  taking  their  way  home.  But  at  least  it  is  clear 
that  the  law  which  takes  away  the  screens  from  bars, 
and  thus  puts  them  in  public  view,  so  that  the  passing 
public,  friends  or  relatives  or  employers,  may  see  any 
man  who  takes  a  drink,  does  not  act  as  a  deterrent; 

159 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

indeed,  the  crowded  condition  of  the  bars  in  general 
throughout  the  city  shows  that  the  enforced  publicity- 
has  not  had  any  prohibitive  effect. 

The  parkways  of  Boston,  and  especially  what  may 
be  called  the  incidental  parkways,  are  thoroughly  ad- 
mirable ;  and  by  incidental  parkways  I  mean  the  nar- 
row strips,  boulevarded  and  parked  for  long  distances, 
as  along  the  Back  Bay  and  out  for  miles  through  the 
Fenway  and  beyond,  where  the  bordering  land  is  used 
freely  for  homes,  and  just  as  much  for  the  charming 
homes  of  people  of  moderate  means  as  for  those  of  the 
wealthy. 

There  are  superb  roadways,  running  through  beauti- 
ful park-land,  far  out  into  the  country  outside  of  Bos- 
ton, such  roads  being  the  result  of  the  combined  and 
coordinated  plans  of  State  and  city  and  townships. 
I  well  remember  such  a  road,  leading  out  through 
Commonwealth  Avenue  and  Brookline,  and  thence  on 
to  the  westward  toward  Weston,  through  a  lovely 
natural  landscape,  admirably  beautified  by  art. 
There  were  groups  of  white  birches  beside  the  road, 
and  there  were  glimpses  of  little  lakes,  and  the  trees 
were  rich  in  the  splendor  of  their  autumn  foliage,  the 
yellow  maples,  the  scarlet  sumac,  the  oaks  with  their 
leaves  of  splendid  bronze.  Country  clubs  seemed  to 
hover,  here  and  there,  along  the  border,  and,  almost 
hidden  by  trees,  I  noticed  many  a  home.  Other  roads 
now  and  then  led  off  enticingly,  and  there  were  open 
glades,  tree  foliaged,  and  splendid  groups  of  massed 
oaks,  and  veritable  old  warriors  of  pines.  It  is  a  roll- 
ing country,  part  hills  and  part  levels,  and  now  and 

160 


THE  STEEETS  OF  BOSTON 

then  there  were  special  bits  of  beauty  where  a  stream 
was  crossed  and  where  one  would  catch  glimpses  of 
canoes  and  of  pretty  girls  paddling  in  blazers  of  yellow 
or  purple  or  green. 

And  this  road  is  only  one  of  a  number  of  perfectly 
oiled  roads,  tar-bound  and  hard,  radiating  away  from 
the  city's  center.  One  such  road  leads  to  the  admira- 
bly conceived  Arnold  Arboretum,  established  nearly 
half  a  century  ago,  through  the  bequest  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  by  James  Arnold  of  New  Bed- 
ford, for  the  growth  and  exhibition  of  every  kind  of 
tree  that  can  be  grown  in  the  New  England  climate. 
The  Arboretum  occupies  over  two  hundred  acres,  and 
is  a  beautiful  and  most  interesting  park,  finely  roaded 
and  footpathed,  and  planted  with  a  vast  variety  of 
trees  and  shrubs,  all  plainly  marked. 

One  of  the  finest  excursions,  by  motor  or  train  or 
trolley,  is  to  Wellesley;  for  the  Elizabethan  college 
buildings,  newly  erected  since  a  fire,  are  positively 
beautiful  in  their  setting  of  water  and  rolling  land 
and  ancient  pines ;  and  the  atmosphere  is  one  of  sweet 
and  scholarly  serenity. 

The  parks  of  Boston,  and  the  parkway  boulevards, 
have  not  as  yet  been  merged,  as  in  Chicago,  in  a  com- 
prehensively connected  system,  yet  the  results  thus 
far  are  highly  satisfactory.  I  remember,  among  other 
roads,  the  Kevere  Beach  Parkway,  a  superb  boulevard 
that  leads  off  towards  Lynn  and  Salem;  curving  out 
from  Charlestown,  and  running  beside  the  broad  blue 
bay  and  the  wide  white  beach  that  are  held  within 
the  protecting  arm  of  Nahant.    Eevere  Beach,  so 

161 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

thronged  with  myriad  pleasure  seekers  in  summer,  I 
recently  saw  in  the  loneliness  of  October,  with  its  long 
line  of  coastwise  buildings  closed,  and  only  two  human 
figures  in  sight  in  the  entire  length  and  breadth  of 
the  beach,  two  girls,  one  redcoated  and  the  other  red- 
capped,  moving  prettily  about. 

And  I  went  on  through  Lynn  and  Swampscott,  along 
a  rock-made  road  just  a  little  higher  than  the  sweep- 
ing sandy  curve  beside  it,  and  there  I  saw  myriad 
boats  floating  in  the  water,  or  lying  on  the  sloping 
sand,  and  the  water  was  all  alive  and  glittering  under 
a  cloudless  sky;  and  a  man  in  yellow  oilskins  was 
leading  a  white  horse  that  was  drawing  a  green  boat, 
mounted  on  low  gray  wheels,  toward  the  blue  water. 


«£< 


CHAPTER  XIV 

IN   THE   OLD   NORTH  END 

jROM  the  old  North  End,  the  old- 
est part  of  the  city,  most  of  the 
vestiges  of  early  American  life 
have  disappeared.  There  are  two 
extremely  interesting  old  build- 
ings, and  there  is  Copp's  Hill,  hut 
in  regard  to  the  rest  of  the  locality 
it  is  not  a  jest,  hut  a  very  practical 
lfPQ=(  ^ac^>  t°  say  that  the  sights  of  the 

%r  North  End  are  mostly  sites. 

Here  and  there,  tucked  away,  are  a  doorway,  a  pil- 
lar, an  ancient  gable,  but  even  such  reminders  are  few. 
However,  the  part  of  the  city  maintains  strikingly  the 
old  Boston  characteristic  of  narrow  streets,  leading 
in  odd  lines,  and  the  two  ancient  buildings  that  re- 
main are  unusually  ancient  and  of  unusual  interest. 
The  North  End  has  become  Italian.  It  is  true  that 
Boston,  on  the  whole,  retains  the  general  atmosphere 
of  an  American  city,  but  the  entire  North  End  is 
foreign,  and  Salem  Street  might  as  well  be  called 
the  Via  Tribunali. 

It  was  many  years  ago  that  the  descendants  of  the 
original  Americans  disappeared  from  the  North  End, 
but  for  a  long  time  afterwards  a  great  many  of  the 

163 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

old-time  houses  remained,  and  the  entire  district  was 
so  taken  over  by  Hebrews  that,  until  recent  years,  the 
typical  resident  was  that  college-song  celebrity,  sung 
into  American  fame,  whose  "name  was  Solomon  Levy, 
with  his  store  on  Salem  Street."  Gradually  the 
Italians  have  come  into  complete  possession,  and  un- 
attractive tenements  have  been  erected  for  them,  to 
take  the  place  of  the  houses  of  the  past. 

The  old  church  on  Salem  Street,  the  Chiesa  del 
Cristo,  is  of  fascinating  interest.  The  name  is  not 
remindful  of  things  American,  and  so  it  may  be  ex- 
plained that,  although  the  Italian  name  has  really 
been  placed  out  in  front  of  the  church  to  attract  the 
neighborhood  dwellers,  the  good  old  American  name 
is  also  there ;  for  it  is  the  Church  of  Christ,  the  famous 
Old  North  Church,  a  bravely  notable  church,  the  old- 
est of  all  the  churches  of  Boston.  But  it  somewhat 
startles  an  American  to  find  Christ  Church  translated 
into  Chiesa  del  Cristo,  with  " Servizio  Divino,"  "Scu- 
ola  D6menicati,,,  and  "Tutti  sono  invitata,"  added. 

But  you  enter  the  church  and  at  once  you  are  back 
in  the  far-distant  American  past,  for  the  church  has 
stood  here  on  the  slope  of  Copp's  Hill  since  1723,  and 
its  interior,  so  fair  and  white,  so  pilastered  and  pan- 
eled in  beauty,  is  full  of  the  very  atmosphere  of  early 
days.  So  white,  indeed,  is  the  interior,  that  the 
only  touches  of  color  are  in  the  rose  silk  about  the 
altar  and  the  organ  gallery,  and  the  color  of  rose  in  the 
lining  of  the  pews,  this  diffused  presence  of  rose  giv- 
ing just  the  needed  softening  touch.  But  I  ought  not 
to  forget  another  touch  of  color :  an  American  flag,  at 

164 


IN  THE  OLD  NOETH  END 

one  end  of  the  church — a  pleasant  thing  to  see  in  this 
old  American  and  now  Italian  neighborhood. 

The  square  box  pews,  the  high  and  isolated  pulpit, 
reached  by  its  bending  stair,  the  double  row  of  white 
columns,  the  great  brass  candelabra  of  such  excellent 
simplicity  in  design — all  is  restful,  complete,  well 
cared  for,  in  every  respect  satisfactory. 

The  exceedingly  sweet  chimes  are  of  eight  bells, 
placed  here  in  1744,  and  upon  one  of  them  the  proud 
statement  is  lettered :  aWe  are  the  first  ring  of  bells 
cast  for  the  British  Empire  in  North  America. ' '  And 
when  they  ring  out  the  old-time  hymns  familiar  to  the 
English-speaking  races,  here  in  the  now  foreign-speak- 
ing region,  as  they  do  on  Sunday  afternoons,  one  may 
fancy  that  it  is  with  a  sort  of  sweet  pathos,  as  if  hop- 
ing that  some  American  will  hear. 

There  are  many  details  of  interest.  The  old  clock 
in  front  of  the  organ  has  ticked  there  for  almost  a 
century  and  a  half.  Here  is  a  pew  set  apart,  so  the 
old  inscription  has  it,  for  the  use  of  the  "Gentlemen 
of  the  Bay  of  Honduras" — and  one  learns  that  this 
pew  was  long  ago  thus  honorably  set  apart  in  recogni- 
tion of  the  building  of  the  spire  of  the  church  by  the 
Honduras  merchants  of  1740.  The  present  spire, 
above  the  tower,  is  not  the  original  one,  which  blew 
down  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  but  the  spire  that  we 
now  see,  delicate  and  strong  and  graceful  as  it  is,  was 
put  up  by  the  architect  to  whom  Boston  owes  much, 
Bulfinch,  who  carefully  reproduced  it  from  the  orig- 
inal drawings.  In  front  of  the  organ  are  four  charm- 
ing little  figures  of  cherubim,  carved  figures  of  women 

165 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

perched  prettily,  with  trumpets  at  their  lips,  stand- 
ing there  as  they  have  stood  since  the  long-past  pre- 
Eevolutionary  days  when  they  were  captured  by  an 
English  privateer  from  a  French  ship. 

It  is  a  place  to  wander  about  in  and  notice  one  in- 
teresting thing  after  another.  Here,  for  example,  is 
a  tablet  in  memory  of  Eeverend  Mather  Byles,  Jr., 
who  was  rector  here  from  1768  to  1775,  one  of  the 
many  Church  of  England  clergymen  who  fled  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Eevolution  to  New  Brunswick  or 
Nova  Scotia,  which  were  still  loyal  British  posses- 
sions. And  there  is  a  tablet  to  the  memory  of  Major 
John  Pitcairn,  he  who  at  Concord,  according  to  the 
spirited  tradition,  stirred  his  rum  with  his  finger  and 
said  that  thus  he  would  stir  the  blood  of  the  Ameri- 
cans before  night,  but  whose  bravery  could  not  save 
the  English  forces  from  their  running  defeat  from 
Concord  back  to  Boston.  He  was  mortally  wounded 
a  few  weeks  later  on  Bunker  Hill.  Likely  enough 
General  Gage,  witnessing  the  battle  from  the  very 
tower  of  this  old  church,  saw  him  carried  by  his  son 
from  the  hillside  down  to  the  boats,  where  the  young 
man  kissed  him  a  last  farewell  and  returned  to  duty 
— one  of  the  extremely  dramatic  touches  in  American 
history,  and  one  which  so  impressed  General  Bur- 
goyne  that  he  spoke  of  what  a  wonderful  scene  it 
would  make  in  a  play. 

Grim  old  vaults  extend  beneath  the  entire  church, 
but  admittance  is  now  forbidden  to  visitors.  I  went 
through,  years  ago,  with  a  garrulous  old  sexton,  now 
long  since  dead,  who  loved  the  old  inscriptions  and 

166 


IN  THE  OLD  NORTH  END 

loved  to  talk  of  the  happenings  in  the  dark  backward 
and  abysm  of  time,  and  I  remember  how  he  pointed 
out,  with  curious  pride,  the  vaults  of  the  poor  of  the 
parish  in  the  place  of  honor  beneath  the  very  altar, 
and  he  deciphered  for  me  ancient,  rusted  inscriptions 
telling  of  lords  and  ladies  who  had  lain  beneath  the 
church — inscriptions  that  were,  to  the  imagination, 
veritable  volumes  of  romance ! — and  he  showed  me  an 
open  charnel  vault,  down  in  those  black  depths,  where 
whitening  bones  lay  in  lidless  coffins. 

Many  of  the  New  England  rectors,  fleeing  from  the 
Revolution,  carried  the  ecclesiastical  silver  of  their 
churches  with  them,  but  Rector  Byles  did  not  follow 
that  unfortunate  example,  and  thus  the  Old  North 
Church  still  owns  its  old  silver,  although  it  has  de- 
posited it,  for  safe  keeping  and  so  that  it  may  be  seen 
under  safe  conditions,  with  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts. 
And  it  is  a  proud  possession,  for  the  splendid  tall 
flagons,  the  paten,  the  bowls,  the  plates,  make  in  all 
the  most  notable  collection  of  old  ecclesiastical  silver 
in  New  England,  and  have  come  down  with  memories 
of  wealthy  donors,  of  merchants,  of  Colonial  rulers, 
even  of  royalty. 

The  church  still  proudly  holds  its  old  vellum-covered 
books,  one  of  the  most  picturesque  collections  in 
America ;  and  there  is  a  very  early  bust  of  Washing- 
ton, believed  to  be  the  first  monument  to  Washington 
to  be  set  up  anywhere  in  America ;  in  recent  years  the 
famous  name  of  Houdon  has  been  attached  to  this,  but 
it  is  not  quite  like  Houdon's  work,  and  it  was  probably 
made  by  some  forgotten  artist  who  was  momentarily 

167 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

inspired  by  such  a  mighty  subject  as  Washington. 

There  is  a  two-centuries-old,  mahogany,  bandy- 
legged armchair  in  the  chancel,  so  fine  in  shape,  so 
truly  glorious  a  specimen  of  chairmaking,  as  fitly  to 
be  compared  with  the  best  old  armchairs  of  America 
— William  Penn's,  the  high-backed  Chippendale  of  the 
first  officer  of  Congress,  the  Jacobean  armchair  of 
Concord,  the  Elder's  chair  of  Plymouth.  One  places 
this  chair  of  Christ  Church  near  the  head  of  the  list. 
The  altar  table  is  also  contemporaneous  with  the 
church  itself  and  is  of  solid,  heavy  oak.  In  a  room 
behind  the  chancel  there  is  also  some  extremely  pleas- 
ing old  furniture,  for  there  are  a  desk  of  oak  and  a 
gate-legged  table,  and  an  ancient  chair  of  Queen  Anne 
design,  fine  and  notable. 

You  go  forth  again  into  Salem  Street,  and  you  have 
been  so  deeply  impregnated  with  the  spirit  of  the  past 
that  you  can  glance  up,  with  a  pleasure  that  is  un- 
alloyed by  the  swarming  foreign  life,  at  the  fine  pro- 
portions of  this  old  edifice,  which  has  stood  here  so 
beautifully  and  so  long.  Then  again  comes  the  sense 
that  this  has  become  a  Naples,  but  without  the  pic- 
turesqueness  of  Naples :  without  the  color,  the  pleas- 
ant intimacies,  the  costumes,  the  flowers,  the  goats, 
of  that  massed  and  ancient  city :  and  you  feel  angered 
that  Italian  boys  crowd  about  you  so  vociferously,  of- 
fering themselves  as  guides  to  the  ancient  American 
graves  on  Copp's  Hill. 

Up  on  the  front  of  the  church  is  a  tablet  telling  that 
from  this  tower  were  hung  the  signal  lanterns  of  Paul 
Bevere ;  and  as  one  reads  this  the  mind  is  filled  with 

168 


IN  THE  OLD  NORTH  END 

a  rush  of  romantic  memories.  For  that  ride  of  Paul 
Revere 's  was  so  wonderful  a  thing!  And  it  is  not 
fiction,  romantic  though  it  sounds,  but  a  veritable  fact. 
Revere  did  not,  so  it  happened,  see  the  lanterns  him- 
self, but  friends  were  on  the  lookout  and  told  him 
that  the  lights  showed,  and  off  he  went  galloping  on 
his  splendid  errand.  Even  the  most  sluggish  blood 
must  thrill  at  such  a  story. 

And  the  tale  itself  would  be  none  the  less  inspiring 
even  if,  as  some  have  believed,  it  was  from  the  tower 
of  another  North  Church  that  the  lights  were  flashed, 
instead  of  from  this,  for  it  is  the  splendid  story  it- 
self that  matters ;  the  story  of  how  Paul  Revere  was 
silently  rowed  to  the  Charlestown  shore,  past  the 
Somerset,  British  man-of-war,  and  the  other  ships  of 
the  British  fleet,  the  story  of  the  flashing  out  of  the 
lights,  and  of  Revere 's  bravely  galloping  off  through 
the  Middlesex  hamlets  and  farms  and  telling  of  the 
British  march:  "A  voice  in  the  darkness,  a  knock 
at  the  door,  and  a  word  that  shall  echo  forevermore,, 
— It  is  a  fine  thing  for  our  country  to  possess  a  tale 
so  splendidly  romantic  and  so  nobly  true. 

The  other  North  Church,  for  which  some  claim  has 
been  made,  stood  in  North  Square,  not  far  from  here, 
and  was  torn  down  by  the  British  for  firewood  in  the 
course  of  the  siege  of  Boston.  Paul  Revere  himself, 
writing  years  after  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  says 
the  signals  were  shown  on  the  " North  Church.' '  He 
does  not  say,  "the  North  Church  that  was  destroyed," 
and  therefore  should  be  taken  to  mean  the  church 
known  by  all  as  the  North  Church  at  the  time  he  wrote 

169 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

— the  church  still  standing  to-day.  The  present 
church  fits  the  description  that  the  lanterned  church 
"rose  above  the  graves  on  the  hill,"  and  the  situation 
is  precisely  such  as  would  be  chosen  for  signaling 
across  the  water ;  so  there  is  no  good  reason  to  doubt 
its  being  the  very  building,  thus  leaving  to  the  noble 
story  a  noble  existent  setting. 

Copp's  Hill  Burying-Ground,  near  the  Old  North 
Church,  the  metaphorical  "night  encampment  on  the 
hill,"  was  literally  a  camp,  for  British  soldiers,  dur- 
ing the  siege,  and  its  oldest  portion  became  a  ceme- 
tery at  least  as  long  ago  as  1660. 

The  hill  is  not  so  high  as  it  originally  was,  having 
been  greatly  altered  in  appearance  by  the  grading 
of  adjacent  streets  and  the  building  of  embankments, 
and  also  by  the  erection  of  tenements  that  huddle 
against  the  cemetery;  and  tenement  dwellers  actually 
string  their  clothes-lines,  with  their  variegated  bur- 
dens, not  only  beside  the  graveyard  but  actually 
across  parts  of  it.  And  cats,  mostly  the  big  yellow 
ones,  roam  sedately  about,  yet  somehow  without  the 
grim  suggestiveness  that  Stevenson  thought  he  dis- 
cerned in  the  cemetery  cats  of  Edinburgh. 

Copp's  Hill  is  particularly  the  burying-ground  of 
the  Mather  family,  including  Cotton  and  Increase,  and 
the  Mather  tomb  is  still  preserved ;  but  as  to  the  graves 
of  most  of  the  other  early  Americans  buried  here  there 
is  scarcely  any  certainty  as  to  precise  location  or  date, 
for  many  of  the  stones  have  been  freely  changed 
about,  and  many  have  had  the  dates  chipped  and  even 
altered ;  many  were  even  carried  away  and,  when  re- 

170 


IN  THE  OLD  NOETH  END 

covered,  were  set  back  at  random.  And  none  of  this 
vandalism  can  be  charged  to  foreigners.  It  was  done 
before  the  influx  of  either  Hebrews  or  foreigners,  by 
Americans  who  saw  humor  in  changing  dates  and 
shifting  stones,  and  others  who  utilitarianly  recog- 
nized in  these  stones  material  for  doorsteps,  window- 
sills  and  chimneys.  Still,  this  burying-ground  stands 
notably,  even  though  conglomeratedly,  for  early  Bos- 
ton. 

I  found  it  a  quiet  place  in  spite  of  the  tenement  sur- 
roundings, and  with  a  marked  effect  of  crowded  mor- 
tality, which  is  doubtless  owing,  in  some  degree,  to 
the  effect  of  crowded  life  in  the  streets  and  tenements 
adjacent.  The  place  is  a  grassy  knoll,  studded  with 
stones  and  with  smallish  trees,  and  the  ground  is 
a-flutter  with  little  American  flags  fastened  on  low 
upright  iron  rods,  it  being  not  precisely  apparent 
which  graves  these  flags  mark,  although  one  naturally 
supposes  that  they  are  offerings  of  Decoration  Day. 

Down  below,  seen  over  rooftops  and  down  narrow 
streets,  is  the  harbor,  and  on  the  height  beyond,  over 
in  Charlestown,  towers  the  lofty  monument  of  Bunker 
Hill.  In  the  harbor,  the  other  day,  there  lay  at 
anchor,  with  felicity  of  position,  several  warships, 
just  where  the  English  warships  were  at  anchor  when 
Paul  Eevere  was  rowed  by. 

Always  in  this  vicinity  the  mind  goes  back  to  Paul 
Eevere.  And  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that  the  little 
building  on  North  Square  which  was  his  home  for 
many  years,  not  many  blocks  away  from  the  Old 
North  Church,  has  been  preserved,  although  it  is  al- 

171 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

most  lost  among  the  Italian  shops  and  tenements  of 
the  district.  It  is  a  small  building  with  an  over-hang- 
ing second  story,  a  high  sloping  roof,  and  the  hugest 
of  chimneys.  And  if  it  has  been  somewhat  over  re- 
stored outside  and  in,  with  more  of  diamond  panes 
than  Eevere  himself  would  have  used,  still,  it  is  such 
a  satisfaction  to  see  it  kept  at  all  that  one  does  not  like 
to  feel  critical  about  it.  It  was  a  very  old  house  when 
Eevere  bought  it,  before  the  Eevolution,  and,  as  a 
gauge  of  values  in  those  days,  it  may  be  mentioned 
that  he  paid  for  it,  in  cash,  213  pounds  6  shillings  and 
8  pence,  and  that  he  also  gave  a  mortgage  for  160 
pounds.  It  was  from  the  very  windows  of  this  house, 
even  though  now  over-diamonded,  that  he  showed 
those  transparencies  of  the  Boston  Massacre  that 
brought  all  Boston  here,  aflame  with  excitement. 

The  boldness  of  Paul  Eevere,  his  bluntness,  his  dar- 
ing, his  physical  energy,  ought  to  have  won  him  high 
place  in  public  affairs.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
trusted  "Sons  of  Liberty,"  from  as  early  as  1765;  as 
confidential  messenger  he  was  entrusted  with  impor- 
tant communications  from  prominent  leaders  of  Bos- 
ton, such  as  Adams  and  Hancock,  to  members  of  the 
Provincial  Congress  and  the  Continental  Congress; 
several  months  before  Lexington,  in  December  of 
1774,  he  rode,  for  the  Boston  Committee  of  Safety,  to 
the  Committee  of  Safety  at  Portsmouth,  notifying 
them  that  the  English  had  prohibited  importations  of 
powder  and  munitions,  and  that  a  large  garrison  had 
been  ordered  to  Fort  William  and  Mary,  whereupon, 
in  consequence  of  this  message,  some  four  hundred 

172 


IN  THE  OLD  NOETH  END 

men  were  hurried  by  the  Portsmouth  Committee  to 
the  fort,  where  they  temporarily  made  prisoners  of 
the  captain  and  his  handful  of  soldiers,  and  went  off 
with  some  ninety-seven  kegs  of  powder  and  a  quantity 
of  small  arms,  which,  thus  captured,  were  afterwards 
used  to  vast  advantage  on  Bunker  Hill. 

As  an  artist,  Eevere  made  prints,  and  copper-plate 
engravings,  of  pictures  of  ante-Kevolutionary  events, 
which  were  sent  out  broadcast  and  made  wide  and 
successful  appeals  to  patriotism.  He  was  forty  years 
old  when  the  Eevolution  began ;  a  man  well  tested  and 
trusted;  a  man  who  had  given  hostages  to  fortune, 
too,  for  by  his  first  wife  he  had  eight  children,  and  he 
had  married  a  second,  who  in  time  was  to  offer  him 
a  like  total  of  eight ! 

He  was  a  silversmith  of  rare  skill,  and  made,  in 
solid  silver,  delicate  ladles,  exquisite  teaspoons, 
stately  flagons,  rotund  mugs,  and  salts,  and  braziers, 
and  sugar-tongs — all  with  skill  and  beauty  and  pro- 
priety; not  crude  things,  but  exquisite  things;  silver 
as  exquisite  as  was  made  in  England  in  that  period  of 
distinctly  fine  taste.  And  examples  of  his  art  are 
still  preserved,  and  vastly  prized,  in  all  the  shapes 
named. 

Paul  Eevere  was  one  of  those  men  who  can  do  any- 
thing and  do  it  well.  He  even  turned  his  attention  to 
dentistry  in  the  early  days  when  dentistry  was  barely 
beginning  to  be  a  science,  and  there  is  still  extant  one 
of  his  advertisements  of  1768,  reading: 

"  Whereas,  many  Persons  are  so  unfortunate  as  to 
lose  their  Fore-Teeth  by  Accident,  and  otherways,  to 

173 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

their  great  Detriment,  not  only  in  Looks,  but  speaking 
both  in  Public  and  Private: — This  is  to  inform  all 
such,  that  they  may  have  them  re-placed  with  artificial 
Ones,  that  looks  as  well  as  the  Natural,  and  answers 
the  End  of  Speaking  to  all  Intents,  by  Paul  Revere.' ' 

When,  quite  a  while  after  Bunker  Hill,  it  was  de- 
sired to  remove  the  body  of  General  Warren  from  its 
first  resting-place,  it  was  Paul  Revere  who  identified 
it  by  an  artificial  tooth  and  the  wire  he  had  used  to 
fasten  it  in. 

Revere  also  engraved  much  of  the  Revolutionary 
money.  Nor  does  the  list  of  his  varied  activities  end 
here,  for  he  also  made  the  carved  wood  frames  for 
many  of  Copley's  paintings — and  beautiful  frames 
they  are ! 

Paul  Revere,  bold  and  shrewd  as  he  was,  seems  to 
have  been  the  only  man  who  distrusted  that  Bostonian 
who  was  the  predecessor  of  Benedict  Arnold,  Doctor 
Benjamin  Church.  Church  was  in  the  confidence  of 
the  early  patriots,  and,  after  taking  part  in  confer- 
ences, used  to  walk  over  to  the  British  and  betray  all 
that  was  being  planned.  Church  was  lucky  to  escape 
with  banishment  when  his  treachery  came  to  light. 

In  spite  of  boldness  and  shrewdness  and  loyalty, 
Revere  had  no  appreciative  standing  in  Boston.  He 
was  always  termed  a  mechanic,  and  was  looked  on 
rather  patronizingly.  When  the  Revolutionary  War 
actually  came,  he  expected  opportunity  for  service, 
but  practically  no  notice  was  taken  of  him.  Although 
Washington  knew  him,  it  was  slightly,  as  a  local  man 
who  cleverly  saw  to  the  repair  of  some  gun-wagons, 

174 


IN  THE  OLD  NORTH  END 

and  so  Eevere  was  not  offered  a  post  with  the  Conti- 
nental army,  but  was  left  to  do  duty  for  the  local  Mas- 
sachusetts authorities,  which  gave  him  an  inactive  life, 
for,  after  the  early  days,  the  War  remained  in  the  Cen- 
tral and  Southern  Colonies.  We  hear  of  him  as  head 
of  a  court-martial,  dealing  out  minor  sentences  such  as 
riding  on  the  wooden  horse  as  a  punishment  for  play- 
ing cards  on  the  Sabbath.  We  hear  of  him  as  gover- 
nor of  Castle  William  (Castle  Island)  in  Boston  Har- 
bor, and  see  him  mounting  there  the  guns  from  the 
wrecked  Somerset — what  thoughts  must  have  come  to 
him  as  he  remembered  the  night  when  he  rowed  past 
her  dark  sides!  We  read  of  him  as  a  subordinate 
member  of  the  poorly  planned  and  more  poorly  exe- 
cuted Penobscot  expedition. 

He  has  left  on  record  that  he  felt,  bitterly,  that  those 
who  knew  him  best,  those  he  thought  his  friends,  took 
no  notice  of  him.  And,  indeed,  a  word  from  Hancock 
or  John  Adams  or  Samuel  Adams  to  either  Washing- 
ton or  Anthony  Wayne,  would  have  given  them  an 
admirable,  capable  soldier  and  would  have  given  Re- 
vere the  chance  he  wanted;  but  Hancock  and  the 
Adamses,  wise  and  patriotic  though  they  were,  were 
not  themselves  men  of  action,  and  were  too  quiet  in 
personal  tastes  to  appreciate  the  merits  of  vivid  per- 
sonal courage.  And  so,  toward  the  end  of  the  war, 
Revere  went  back  to  private  life  and  work  again,  a 
disappointed  man. 

After  the  war  was  over  he  asked  to  be  Master  of 
the  Mint — and  what  honor  and  distinction  he,  with  his 
skill  and  artistic  feeling,  would  have  given  it!    But 

175 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 


his  Boston  friends  in  power  found  it  politically  in- 
convenient to  urge  his  claims  and  his  ability  upon 
Congress,  and  thus  the  Mint  missed  a  superb  master 
and  Eevere  continued  a  private  citizen.  He  estab- 
lished a  brass  foundry  and  furnished  the  brass  and 
copper  work  for  the  splendid  Old  Ironsides,  and  re- 
ceived for  it,  it  is  curious  to  know,  the  sum  of  $3,820.33. 
He  rolled  sheets  of  copper  for  the  dome  of  the  State 
House  on  Beacon  Hill.  And  when  Governor  Samuel 
Adams,  in  1795,  laid  the  corner  stone  of  the  State 
House,  his  first  assistant  was  "the  Most  Worshipful 
Paul  Bevere,  Grand  Master";  and,  as  Grand  Master 
of  the  Grand  Lodge  of  Massachusetts,  he  signed  the 
address  from  the  Masons  to  George  Washington,  the 
Mason,  when  he  left  the  Presidency. 

And  so  it  is  interesting  to  see  preserved,  here  in 
this  ancient  quarter  of  Boston,  the  little  ancient  house 
that  was  for  many  years  the  home  of  that  remarkable 
man. 


s=*r 


ST"? 


CHAPTER  XV 


DOWN   WAPPING  STREET  AND  UP   BUNKER  HILL 


VER  in  that  old  part  of  Boston 
still  known  as  Charlestown, 
there  is  a  little  quaint  and  wav- 
ering street,  shabby  and  irregu- 
lar ;  it  is  a  street  that  arouses  an 
odd  sense  of  interest,  and  the  in- 
terest is  added  to  by  the  signs 
which  you  read  in  the  windows 
of  the  shabby  little  shops. 
"Everything  from  a  needle  to 
an  anchor";  "Why  get  wet  when  a  raincoat  is 
only  $1.25?";  "Lockers  to  let";  and  you  see,  also, 
that  such  simple  joys  are  provided  as  white 
shoes,  gum,  tobacco,  and  candy,  and  that  there 
are  to  be  had  not  only  "Yokahoma  Eats"  but  also 
"Honolulu  Lunch."  I  noticed,  also,  a  sign  "Don't 
risk  your  money ;  buy  a  leg-belt" — a  leg-belt ;  so  that's 
the  way,  is  it,  that  sailors  keep  their  money ! 

This  wavering,  savory  little  street  is  Wapping 
Street,  and  not  only  in  its  name  is  it  delightfully 
reminiscent  of  waterside  London,  but  in  its  aspect; 
and  it  is  curiously  fitting  that  this  street  should  be 
reminiscent  of  something  that  is  English,  for  it  leads 
to  the  gate  of  the  Charlestown  Navy  Yard,  and  where 

177 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  Navy  Yard  is  now  the  English  landed  for  their 
attack  on  Bunker  Hill. 

There  are  spaciousness  and  quiet  inside  of  the 
grounds  of  the  Navy  Yard,  and  flowers  and  gardens 
and  a  pergola ;  and  a  bugle  sounds  through  the  air,  and 
in  a  little  while  a  band  is  playing,  and  capable-looking 
officers  and  men  walk  spiritedly  about,  and  there  are 
long  machine  shops  and  quarters,  and  here  and  there 
is  some  old  cannon  or  figurehead  from  some  ship  of  the 
past,  and  there  is  the  fine,  old-fashioned  home  of  the 
commandant,  with  its  cream-colored  brick ;  in  fact,  all 
the  brick  hereabouts  is  cream-colored,  and  Uncle  Sam 
is  very  generous  with  paint. 

At  the  piers,  or  out  on  the  open  water,  warships, 
little  or  big,  lie  moored,  and  near  the  very  heart  of  it 
all  is  the  famous  frigate  Constitution,  lovingly  known 
as  Old  Ironsides. 

She  is  black  and  white,  in  her  glory  of  masts  and 
spars  and  myriad  ropes.  From  her  curving  prow  to 
the  quaint-shaped  cabin  at  the  stern,  her  lines  are  of 
the  handsomest.  She  is  graceful  and  strong,  she  is 
trim  and  capable  and  proud,  and  her  guns,  in  their 
long  double  lines,  are  close  together,  giving  a  realizing 
sense  of  the  meaning  of  the  old  word  " broadside.' ' 
One  is  apt  to  forget  that  such  a  warship  carried  hun- 
dreds of  fighters  and  scores  of  cannon. 

The  ship  is  freely  open  to  visitors,  and  one  cannot 
but  be  a  better  American  for  going  aboard  and  actually 
treading  its  decks;  one  cannot  but  feel  a  surge  of 
patriotism  when  going  about  on  this  old  ship  that 
made  such  glorious  history. 

178 


OLD    IRONSIDES 


CAPPING  STREET  AND  BUNKER  HILL 

It  was  well  on  toward  a  century  ago,  in  1830,  that 
some  Government  official  gave  orders  to  have  the  ship 
broken  up  and  sold  for  junk ;  and  the  entire  nation  was 
shocked  when  the  news  was  learned,  for  Old  Iron- 
sides had  won  a  place  very  close  to  all  hearts.  And 
a  young  man,  burning  with  the  indignation  that  all 
were  feeling,  put  that  fiery  feeling  into  fiery  words : 

"Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down! 
Long  has  it  waved  on  high, 
And  many  an  eye  has  danced  to  see 
That  banner  in  the  sky ! ' ' 

Thus  the  lines  began,  and  they  went  on  gloriously 
to  the  demand  that  rather  than  break  up  and  sell  the 
splendid  ship  they 

"Nail  to  the  mast  her  holy  flag, 
Set  every  threadbare  sail, 
And  give  her  to  the  god  of  storms, 
The  lightning  and  the  gale ! ' ' 

After  that  there  was  no  more  talk  of  breaking 
up  Old  Ironsides.  With  these  lines,  young  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  had  done  a  proud  service  for  his 
country,  and  the  ship  was  repaired  and  painted,  to  be 
kept  as  a  national  possession,  and  the  Government 
ever  since  then  has  continued  to  paint  and  furbish  her, 
and  she  is  still  a  national  heritage.  A  few  years  ago, 
as  she  was  said  to  be  going  to  pieces  at  her  pier,  some 
navy  officer  proposed  that  she  be  towed  out  to  sea, 
not  to  be  given  the  glorious  end  that  Holmes  pictured 
as  being  better  than  tearing  up  for  junk,  but  to  be  a 

179 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

floating  target  for  battleships  and  sunk  for  gunners' 
practice !  But  Congress  was  at  once  so  overwhelmed 
with  protests  that  it  was  decided  still  to  keep  the  gal- 
lant old  ship. 

The  houses  of  Charlestown  rise  crowdedly  behind 
the  line  of  the  Navy  Yard,  and  above  and  beyond  the 
confusion  of  roofs  one  sees  the  upper  part  of  a  tall 
stone  shaft,  bare  and  dignified  in  its  fine  simplicity. 
And  no  American  can  look  at  that  monument  and  be 
entirely  unmoved,  for  it  marks  the  place  where  was 
fought  the  most  representatively  American  of  all  bat- 
tles, that  of  Bunker  Hill. 

And  here,  from  the  Navy  Yard,  where  the  British 
troops  landed  long  before  there  was  any  Navy  Yard, 
we  follow  up  the  hill ;  only  we  do  not  go  in  a  practically 
direct  line,  as  the  British  soldiers  did,  but,  after  walk- 
ing back  through  queer  little  Wapping  Street,  go  by 
trolley,  zigzaggingly,  through  rather  commonplace 
streets  to  the  summit.  There  is  nothing  in  Charles- 
town  that  offers  interest  except  the  Navy  Yard  and 
the  monument;  the  town  was  set  on  fire  and  burned 
by  the  British  at  the  time  of  the  battle — no  doubt  a 
military  necessity — and  the  rebuilt  portion,  as  well  as 
the  great  spaces  that  were  bare  in  Eevolutionary  days 
and  have  since  been  built  over,  have  never  drawn 
either  wealth  or  an  interesting  kind  of  architecture. 
But  one  thinks  little  of  such  considerations  as  these 
in  the  presence  of  Bunker  Hill  Monument. 

A  strange  battle,  that  of  Bunker  Hill!  On  the 
American  side  there  were  no  uniforms  and  there  was 
no  flag!    There  was  really  not  even  a  leader,  for  no 

180 


WAPPING  STEEET  AND  BUNKEE  HILL 

one  general  was  absolutely  in  command.  The  Ameri- 
cans had  come  together  in  a  sort  of  neighborly  gather- 
ing, for  the  mutual  good,  and  officers  and  men  were  all 
fully  in  accord  with  one  another.  But  although  it 
may  be  said  to  have  been  a  neighborly  New  England 
gathering,  there  was  no  lack  of  military  skill  and  no 
lack  of  discipline.  And  the  British  themselves  ad- 
mitted afterwards  that  there  was  no  lack  of  the  best 
fighting  qualities. 

And  the  spectators  outnumbered  the  fighters  I  That 
strange  fact  makes  the  battle  unique  among  the  great 
battles  of  the  world.  For  not  only  did  General  Gage 
and  other  officers  watch  the  fight  from  the  tower  of  the 
old  North  Church,  but  every  high  point  of  land,  every 
roof  and  window  that  had  an  outlook  over  the  water, 
was  crowded  with  the  people  of  Boston,  sympathizers 
with  either  Eoyalty  or  Eepublicanism,  watching  the 
fight  with  intense  or  even  frantic  interest.  They  saw 
the  Americans  calmly  walk  about  and  calmly  settle  be- 
hind the  hastily  made  breastwork,  preparing  for  the 
assault.  They  saw  the  red-coats  go  steadily  up  the 
hill.  They  watched  with  straining  interest  as  the 
breastwork  was  neared — Would  the  Americans  run? 
— And  then  came  the  flash  of  rifles  and  the  crackling 
roar  of  sound  and  the  red-coats  wavered  and  recoiled, 
and  officers  furiously  tried  to  encourage  and  hold  their 
men ;  but  in  vain,  for  down  the  hill  the  red-coats  ran, 
leaving  the  slope  dotted  thick  with  the  dead  and 
wounded.  What  a  sight  for  the  men  and  women  and 
children  who  watched  all  this  with  terrified  interest ! 
Then  again  the  calm  preparation,  again  a  brave  at- 

181 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

tack,  again  a  withering  fire  and  a  huddled  retreat 
down  the  hill. 

Well,  we  all  know  that  at  length  the  British  won, 
and  that,  in  full  sight  of  the  Boston  spectators,  almost 
all  of  whom  had  friends  or  kinsmen  among  the  fighters, 
the  Americans  fell  back  with  glory.  "The  defense 
was  well  conceived  and  obstinately  maintained,' ' 
writes  the  clear-eyed  Burgoyne,  one  of  the  British 
major-generals  in  Boston,  who  had  been  given  charge 
of  some  desultory  cannonading.  ' '  The  retreat  was  no 
flight,"  he  writes,  English  general  though  he  was ;  "it 
was  even  covered  with  bravery  and  military  skill." 
(He  was  afterwards  to  learn,  still  more  intimately, 
about  American  bravery  and  military  skill !)  And  the 
first  question  of  General  Washington,  not  yet  in  New 
England,  when  he  heard  of  Bunker  Hill,  was  the  eager 
inquiry  as  to  whether  or  not  the  militia  had  stood  firm, 
and  when  he  was  told  how  superbly  they  had  acted,  he 
exclaimed,  "Then  the  liberties  of  the  country  are 
safe !"  And  all  this  leads  to  the  strangest  considera- 
tion of  all  in  regard  to  this  battle,  which  is,  that  al- 
though it  was  an  American  defeat,  it  had  all  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  an  American  victory. 

Charlestown  is  on  a  peninsula,  and,  from  a  strictly 
military  point  of  view,  there  was  nothing  to  be  gained 
by  the  Americans  in  advancing  to  a  position  so  un- 
tenable that  the  English,  by  so  locating  the  warships 
as  to  cut  off  communication  with  the  mainland,  could 
have  made  their  retreat  impossible.  Also,  from  a 
strictly  military  point  of  view,  there  was  nothing  to  be 
gained  by  the  British  in  making  a  direct  attack  upon 

182 


WAPPING  STEEET  AND  BUNKEE  HILL 

the  American  position  in  front.  But  both  sides  were 
keyed  for  a  test  of  strength,  both  sides  knew  that  the 
test  must  come  sooner  or  later,  and  on  both  sides  was 
the  intense  feeling  that  the  sooner  the  better. 

All  the  central  part  of  the  battle-field  has  been  kept 
free  from  buildings,  and  they  cluster  modestly  about 
the  big,  open,  grass-covered  space.  And  from  the 
center  of  this  space  rises  the  monument,  flawless  in  its 
stern  dignity,  massive  in  its  strength.  Without  pre- 
liminary base,  it  rises  from  the  ground ;  it  is  of  blocks 
of  New  England  granite  and  has  a  monolithic  effect, 
lofty  and  tall.  And  the  most  eloquent  man  that  New 
England  has  ever  produced,  the  mighty  orator  who 
spoke  at  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone  and  at  the  com- 
pletion of  the  monument,  summed  up  its  feeling  and 
its  influence  with  a  massive  simplicity  equal  to  that  of 
the  monument  itself: 

1 '  It  is  a  plain  shaft.  It  bears  no  inscriptions.  But 
it  looks,  it  looks,  it  speaks,  to  the  full  comprehension 
of  every  American  mind,  and  the  awakening  of  glow- 
ing enthusiasm  in  every  American  heart.' ' 

It  was  among  the  most  interesting  features  of  the 
celebration  of  the  monument's  completion,  in  1843, 
that  thirteen  survivors,  of  Bunker  Hill  or  Lexington 
or  Concord,  were  present  to  listen  to  Webster's  ora- 
tion, although  that  was  sixty-eight  years  after  those 
battles !  It  had  seemed  almost  wonderful  that  quite  a 
number  of  Bunker  Hill  veterans  were  present  at  the 
laying  of  the  corner-stone  in  1825,  when  Webster 
thrilled  the  vast  assemblage  before  him  with  the  words 
addressed  to  the  survivors — the  best  known  of  all  his 

183 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

utterances — beginning  "  Venerable  men,  you  have 
come  down  to  us  from  a  former  generation ! '  * 

Another  who  was  present  in  1825  to  listen  to  Web- 
ster was  a  certain  Jean  Paul  Eoch  Ives  Gilbert  Motier, 
Marquis  de  Lafayette;  and  Boston  still  loves  to  tell 
that  at  a  dinner  given  in  the  distinguished  French- 
man's honor  at  the  time  of  this  visit,  he  emotionally 
joined  in  cheering  some  words  laudatory  of  himself, 
through  not  quite  catching  that  he  was  the  subject  of 
the  eulogy ;  something,  by  the  way,  which  would  never 
have  been  noticed  in  France,  and  certainly  not  remem- 
bered for  more  than  a  minute,  had  some  American 
general  over  there,  from  lack  of  full  understanding 
of  the  language,  joined  in  applause  of  himself. 

It  is  well  to  remember  in  regard  to  Bunker  Hill,  that 
the  British  forces  engaged  in  the  attack  numbered 
some  two  thousand  men,  and  that  the  defenders  were 
fewer,  being  in  all  only  some  fifteen  hundred ;  and  that 
the  Americans  lost  about  three  hundred  and  fifty  in 
killed,  wounded  and  prisoners,  whereas  the  English 
loss  in  killed  and  wounded  was  well  over  one  thousand. 
I  remember  seeing,  in  some  museum,  a  cotemporary 
pamphlet  that  was  scattered  throughout  America, 
grimly  itemizing  that  the  English  lost,  in  killed,  1  lieu- 
tenant-colonel, 4  majors,  11  captains,  13  lieuten- 
ants, 1  ensign,  102  sergeants  and  100  corporals.  No 
wonder  Bunker  Hill  has  been  looked  upon  as  the  place 
where  the  British  army  faced  the  hottest  fire  of  its 
history,  considering  the  number  engaged  and  the 
length  of  time  that  the  actual  firing  lasted ;  and  it  was 
especially  noticeable  that  the  officers  suffered,  propor- 

184 


WAPPING  STREET  AND  BUNKER  HILL 

tionately,  even  more  than  the  men,  because  most  of 
the  Americans  were  sharp-shooters  and  picked  them 
off. 

After  the  battle  the  British  occupied  the  hill  them- 
selves, and  kept  soldiers  there  throughout  the  contin- 
uation of  the  siege;  and  General  Washington  never 
tried  to  take  it  away  from  them,  knowing  that  its  pos- 
session would  have  no  particular  bearing  on  the  cap- 
ture of  the  city,  and  that  it  would  naturally  fall  into 
American  hands  again  in  good  time. 

The  days  of  the  siege  were  so  tiresome  to  the  British 
that  they  amused  themselves  by  presenting  plays  of 
their  own  composition,  in  Faneuil  Hall,  and  one  of 
these  plays  was  a  farce  which  they  called  ' '  The  Block- 
ade of  Boston."  The  farce  gave  them  huge  enjoy- 
ment, for  it  caricatured  Americans  in  general  and 
American  soldiers  in  particular,  and  presented  a 
special  caricature  of  General  Washington  himself, 
armed  with  a  grotesque  rusty  sword  and  attended  by 
a  grotesque  orderly.  On  a  January  night  in  1776  the 
very  building  was  rocking  with  the  laughter  of  the  men 
and  their  officers  at  this  presentation,  when  a  sergeant 
rushed  into  the  hall ; ' l  The  Yankees  are  attacking  our 
works  on  Bunker  Hill ! ' '  he  cried.  For  a  few  moments 
there  was  an  amazed  silence.  The  men  thought  it  a 
joke,  and  yet  the  sergeant's  tone  had  a  grim  earnest- 
ness that  they  did  not  like.  Then  there  came  the  sharp 
command  of  their  general,  who  was  present :  * '  To  your 
posts,  men ! ' '  A  cold  chill  seemed  to  fill  the  hall,  and 
all  the  farce  fell  away  from  the  idea  of  Washington 
and  Americans,  for  although  those  English  soldiers 

185 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

were  not  cowards  it  was  anything  but  a  farce  to  face 
Americans  on  Bunker  Hill  or  anywhere  else.  It 
turned  out  that  that  particular  alarm  was  a  mistake 
and  that  no  attack  was  in  progress,  but  never  after  was 
there  much  hilarity  at  farces  ridiculing  the  Americans. 

Close  beside  Bunker  Hill  Monument  there  was  put 
up,  a  few  years  ago,  a  little  building  that  was  an  entire 
departure  from  the  fine  simplicity  of  the  original 
plans;  a  little  classic  stone  temple,  with  six  classic 
stone  columns;  an  incongruous  structure  to  find  on 
Bunker  Hill.  It  does  not  have  even  the  excuse  of  be- 
ing a  museum,  except  for  a  few  not-notable  paintings ; 
but  it  is  a  place  where  souvenirs  and  post-cards  are 
sold.  There  ought  to  be  nothing  there  but  the  monu- 
ment itself.  A  structure  of  any  sort  breaks  the 
splendid  austerity  of  effect. 

Not  far  from  the  monument  is  a  statue  in  honor  of 
the  brave  Prescott,  showing  him  in  his  long  and  un- 
military  coat  just  as  he  stood  when  giving  the  com- 
mand to  fire,  that  had  been  withheld  till  the  whites  of 
the  English  eyes  could  be  seen.  The  statue  is  by  the 
American  sculptor,  Story,  and  one  wonders  why,  in 
spite  of  its  excellence,  it  is  wanting  in  vigorous  vital- 
ity, and  seems  even  a  trifle  priggish;  and  then  it  is 
noticed  that  down  on  one  corner  is  some  incised  letter- 
ing telling  that  it  was  made  at  "Boma" — not  Boston, 
or  even  good  plain  Borne,  but  "Boma";  and  one  won- 
ders no  longer  that  vitality  and  Americanism  were 
missed. 

But  one  need  not  trouble  about  such  minor  things  as 
classic  temples  or  Boman- American  sculpture,  for  the 

186 


WAPPING  STREET  AND  BUNKEB  HILL 

noble  Bunker  Hill  Monument  is  here,  telling  forever 
its  noble  tale;  and  even  the  lines  of  the  redoubts,  so 
bravely  held,  have  been  remembered  and  carefully 
marked ;  and  the  sense  of  American  glory  is  here. 

In  the  Tower  of  London  there  is  a  cannon  which,  as 
the  English  claim,  was  captured  at  Bunker  Hill;  and 
a  few  years  ago,  when  this  was  vauntingly  shown  to  a 
visiting  American,  he  looked  it  all  over  very  calmly 
and  then,  just  as  calmly,  said :  ' '  Oh,  I  see ;  you  have  the 
cannon — and  we  have  the  hill ! ' ' 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   BACK   BAY  AND  THE   STUDENTS'   QUAETEB 

HO  no  Bostonian  does  the 
Back  Bay  mean  water!  The 
Charles,  backed  up  by  a  dam 
to  the  dimensions  of  a  bay,  re- 
mains merely  the  Charles,  and 
the  Back  Bay  is  the  erstwhile 
swamp  land  beyond  Beacon 
Hill  and  the  Common.  Even 
the  Public  Garden  was,  long  ago,  merely  a  marsh  at 
the  Common's  end,  and  the  great  space  beyond,  now 
covered  by  endless  streets  and  houses,  is  all  made 
land.    It  is  the  Back  Bay. 

The  main  artery  of  the  Back  Bay  is  Commonwealth 
Avenue,  and  it  is  so  proudly  boulevarded,  in  noble 
sweep  and  breadth,  that  one  is  almost  ready  to  forget 
the  brown-stone  monotony  of  its  houses.  The  avenue 
is  two  hundred  and  twenty  feet  in  width,  from  house- 
front  to  house-front,  and  is  free  of  street  cars.  Down 
its  center  is  a  great,  generous,  tree-lined,  well-shaded 
parkway,  with  a  path  down  the  middle  for  pedestrians ; 
there  are  pleasantly  placed  benches  by  which  the  park- 
like character  is  increased;  and  this  long  central 

188 


THE  BACK  BAY 

greenery  has  a  series  of  admirably  placed  statues,  with 
the  equestrian  Washington,  excellently  done  by  Ball, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  line;  although  Bostonians 
themselves  long  ago  pointed  out  that  he  has  turned  his 
back  on  the  State  House  and  is  riding  away ! 

This  avenue  is  so  successful,  so  notable,  as  to  have 
served  as  a  model  for  other  boulevards  throughout  the 
United  States,  and  it  has  also  given  inspiration  to  Bos- 
ton for  her  recent  development  of  home-bordered  park- 
ways running  out  toward  outlying  suburbs. 

One  of  the  statues  is  of  John  Glover  of  Marblehead, 
who  commanded  a  thousand  men  of  his  town,  whom  he 
formed  into  a  redoubtable  Marine  Eegiment, "  soldiers 
and  sailors  too";  and  this  monument  perpetuates  his 
skill  and  bravery  in  getting  Washington's  army  across 
to  New  York  after  the  defeat  at  Long  Island,  and  his 
even  more  remarkable  success  in  boating  the  army 
across  the  Delaware  on  a  certain  bitter  winter's  night 
at  a  place  still  called  Washington's  Crossing.  He 
died  in  his  beloved  Marblehead ;  but  Boston  has  placed 
his  statue  here,  feeling  that  in  this  city  such  a  valiant 
son  of  New  England  should  be  forever  remembered. 
His  hand  firmly  grasps  his  sword  hilt — but  the  sword 
itself  has  gone !  Was  it  the  act  of  some  vandal,  one 
wonders,  some  one  with  a  degenerate  idea  of  relic 
hunting?  But  at  least  nobody  ever  took  his  sword 
away  from  John  Glover  living. 

Another  of  the  line  of  statues  is  that  of  Alexander 
Hamilton,  and  it  looks  odd  because  it  is  minus  the 
familiar  queue.  On  the  lower  part  of  this  monument 
is  a  medallion,  of  three  profiles,  apparently  of  Ham- 

189 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ilton;  not  quite  understandable  this,  and  one  can  think 
only  of  the  two  skulls  of  Saint  Peter  shown  by  the 
Eoman  guide,  one  of  the  saint  in  early  manhood  and 
the  other  in  later  life.  This  triple  representation,  if 
of  Hamilton,  does  not  have  the  reason  for  being  of  the 
wonderful  triple  portrait,  by  Gilbert  Stuart,  of 
Madame  Bonaparte. 

The  great  expanse  of  water  that  is  really  the  Back 
Bay,  and  which  borders  the  section  of  land  that  Boston 
perversely  calls  the  Back  Bay,  is  one  of  the  glories  of 
Boston.  Although  broadened  by  a  dam,  it  is  not  water 
that  is  lifeless  and  dull,  but  water  that  is  cheerful, 
wimpling,  sparkling,  very  much  alive.  And  when  a 
winter  storm  comes  the  water  dashes  over  its  broaden- 
ing embankment  with  all  the  appearance  of  a  real  sea. 
Along  the  waterside,  and  for  a  broad  space  back  from 
the  water,  a  parkway  has  been  made  that  at  any  season 
of  the  year  offers  most  admirable  waterside  walking. 
Surely,  no  other  modern  city  is  so  thoughtful  of  its 
pedestrians,  in  these  days  of  motor-cars,  as  is  Boston. 
You  may  walk  on  Charles  Bank  for  a  long  distance,  on 
a  broad  concrete  walk,  with  grass  and  shrubs  on  one 
side  and  the  dancing  water  on  the  other.  The  long 
line  of  houses  built  on  the  Back  Bay  extension  of  Bea- 
con Street  looks  out  over  the  water,  and  the  people 
who  live  in  these  houses  prize  the  view,  with  its  sun- 
set glories ;  but  all  along  the  water-front  one  sees  only 
the  backs  of  the  houses — the  back  windows !  To  the 
Bostonian,  the  proper  fronting  of  a  house  is  on  a  con- 
ventional two-sided  street,  and  the  architectural 
temptation  of  a  fine  front  toward  a  fine  water-view 

190 


THE  BACK  BAY 

does  not  alter  propriety.  "We  have  the  view  from 
our  rear  windows,' '  they  tell  you;  not  even  willing  to 
adopt  double-fronted  houses,  which  would  give  archi- 
tectural finish  toward  the  water  as  well  as  toward  the 
street. 

Between  Charles  Bank  and  Beacon  Hill,  the  city  had 
become  unattractive  in  development,  whereupon,  a 
few  years  ago,  the  property-owners  banded  together 
cooperatively  and  did  a  fine  thing  which  would  have 
been  quite  impossible  to  them  acting  as  individual 
owners.  They  united  in  a  comprehensive  plan  for 
improvement,  and  there  has  already  been  the  most 
delightful  success,  for  houses  have  been  built  that  are 
mutually  protected  and  protecting,  notably  on  the 
cleverly  arranged  Charles  Street  Square,  with  its 
broad  opening  out  toward  the  water,  and  its  houses  all 
balanced  architecturally  in  the  Colonial  style.  So 
successful  has  this  been  that  there  will  shortly  be  an 
adjoining  group  of  houses,  which  is  to  bear  the  name 
of  Charles  Street  Circle. 

To  people  outside  of  Boston,  the  words  "Back  Bay ' ' 
represent  social  domination,  but  Boston  itself  knows 
that  social  supremacy  has  remained  with  Beacon  Hill. 
Although  "the  sunny  street  that  holds  the  sifted  few" 
stretches  into  the  Back  Bay,  and  although  the  author 
of  that  line,  Holmes,  moved  off  into  the  levels,  on  that 
extended  street — his  last  home  was  the  ordinary-look- 
ing house  at  296  Beacon  Street — and  although  Silas 
Lapham  and  many  another  have  built  or  bought  in  the 
Back  Bay,  most  of  the  "sifted  few"  remain  on  Beacon 
Hill.    Even  the  wealth  that  went  to  the  Back  Bay 

191 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

found  that  it  "cannot  buy  with  gold  the  old  associa- 
tions"; and  the  Back  Bay  is,  after  all,  just  street  after 
street  filled  with  houses,  representative  of  comfortable 
living,  which  are  too  ordinary  to  praise  and  yet  not 
bad  enough  to  criticise.  It  is  not  altogether  clear  why 
one  feels  resentment  toward  the  houses  and  streets  of 
the  Back  Bay,  for  they  seem  innocent  enough:  but 
when  Henry  James  impatiently  wrote  of  their  "  per- 
spectives of  security,' '  he  expressed,  by  this  curious 
phrase,  that  the  Back  Bay  somehow  gets  on  the  nerves. 

But  this  region  does  at  least  spread  out  with  a 
luxury  of  space,  as  if  the  city,  released  from  the 
cramping  of  its  original  bounds — hemmed  in  as  it 
originally  was  by  bay  and  river  and  swamp,  and  there- 
fore built  with  repression,  with  tightness,  with  narrow- 
ness of  streets — rejoices  in  its  new-found  freedom. 

And  here  there  is  something  typically  and  pleas- 
antly Bostonian.  Beginning  with  the  cross-streets  of 
the  Back  Bay,  the  street  names  are  in  alphabetical  se- 
quence, with  two-syllabled  names  alternating  with 
three;  or,  I  should  say,  being  in  Boston,  dissyllables 
alternating  with  trisyllables ;  and  the  Bostonians  take 
a  nice  pride  in  it.  There  are  Arlington,  Berkeley, 
Clarendon,  Dartmouth,  Exeter,  Fairfield,  Gloucester — 
and  it  would  seem  that  Boston,  differing  from  the  rest 
of  America  and  from  England,  deems  Gloucester  a 
trisyllable  and  will  have  none  of  the  elided  "Gloster." 

That  the  present  home  of  Margaret  Deland  is  in  the 
Back  Bay  is  one  of  its  pleasantest  features,  and  the 
house,  35  Newbury  Street,  shows  a  great  frontage  of 
mullion-windowed  glass,  being  even  more  marked  in 

192 


THE  BACK  BAT 

respect  to  glass  than  her  former  home  on  Mt.  Vernon 
Street.  And  this  window  frontage  is  for  the  sake  of 
the  jonquils  and  spring  flowers  that  she  loves  and 
which  she  personally  plants  and  watches.  The  crea- 
tor of  Doctor  Lavendar,  the  author  who  has  filled  Old 
Chester  with  fascinating  life,  is  almost  as  notahle  a 
flower-grower  as  she  is  a  novelist,  and  once  a  year, 
in  this  comfortable,  sunny  home,  she  holds  a  winter 
sale  of  these  jonquils  that  she  has  grown  and  gives 
the  proceeds  to  a  vacation  home  for  girls,  a  project 
dear  to  her  heart. 

A  fine  daylight  view  of  the  sky-line  of  the  Back  Bay 
may  be  had  from  the  center  of  the  Cambridge  Bridge ; 
I  do  not  remember  any  similar  view  in  any  other  city ; 
and  it  possesses  the  additional  peculiarity  of  being  a 
view  of  levels :  the  level  of  the  water,  the  level  of  the 
parkway,  then  the  generally  level  line  of  house  roofs. 
But  the  finest  view  that  the  Back  Bay  offers  is  of  the 
water  itself  and  not  the  land,  and  at  night  instead  of 
in  the  daytime.  For  this  view,  stand  far  out  on  Har- 
vard Bridge,  and  the  effect  is  beautiful  in  the  extreme. 
You  are  hemmed  in  by  the  rows  of  city  lights  that  sur- 
round the  water  on  all  sides ;  a  mile  away  the  view  is 
finely  ended,  in  one  direction,  by  the  arching  curve  of 
lights  that  mark  the  Cambridge  Bridge ;  about  as  far 
in  the  other  direction,  the  bordering  lights  converge 
as  the  water  narrows ;  down  the  long  sides  are  the  un- 
broken lines  of  lights ;  you  see  nothing  whatever  but 
these  lights,  and  the  dark  water  dimly  illumined  by 
their  gleam,  and  the  restless  reflections  of  the  myriad 
lights  struck  waveringly  down  into  the  water,  and  the 

193 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

bands  of  light  that  royally  make  a  diadem  of  the  great 
dome  on  the  height  of  Beacon  Hill. 

The  social  rivalry  of  Beacon  Hill  and  the  Back  Bay 
may  be  left  to  the  Bostonians,  just  as  the  social  rivalry 
of  south  and  north  of  Market  Street  may  be  left  to 
Philadelphians ;  and  Beacon  Hill  and  the  Back  Bay 
are  quite  at  one  on  the  most  Bostonian  of  all  subjects, 
that  of  " family."  For  in  Boston,  every  one  of  the 
worth  while  is  a  descendant;  no  one  who  is  only  an 
ascendant  is  for  a  moment  worthy  of  comparison  with 
a  descendant!  One  of  the  cleverest  Bostonians  once 
remarked  that  although  politically  there  should  be 
equality,  socially  there  should  be  "the"  quality.  As 
the  verse  of  exclusiveness  has  it : 

"The  good  old  city  of  Boston, 
The  city  of  culture  and  cod, 
Where  the  Cabots  speak  only  to  Lowells 
And  the  Lowells — speak  only  to  God." 

And  there  are  endless  developments.  A  famous 
Bostonian,  commenting  on  the  great  fire  of  1872, 
clearly  indicated  that  the  important  feature  was,  not 
that  he  had  suffered  by  this  fire,  but  that  his  grand- 
father had  lost  40  buildings  in  the  big  fire  of  1760 ! 
Boston  conversation  is  apt  to  be  sprinkled  thick  with 
Bible-like  genealogy;  I  have  heard,  as  typical  din- 
ner-table conversation,  such  things  as:  " James  was 
the  son  of  John,  you  know,  who  was  the  son  of  Thomas, 
the  cousin  of  William."  Most  Bostonians  are  not 
much  interested  in  any  conversation  unless  they  can 
naturally  put  in  an  ancestor  or  so,  and  always,  in 

194 


THE  BACK  BAY 

speaking  of  any  happening  of  the  past,  Bostonians  are 
bound  to  remember  that  some  ancestor  or  connection 
was  concerned.  The  traveler  need  not  journey  to 
China  to  find  ancestor  worship. 

One  would  no  more  have  Boston  without  its  naive 
flavor  of  family  talk  than  have  Maarken  without  its 
typical  costumes:  family  belongs  to  Boston,  as  cos- 
tumes belong  to  Maarken :  and  it  is  not  in  the  least  a 
boastful  pride  in  ancestors  who  have  done  great  deeds : 
the  important  thing  is  to  be  descended  from  certain 
stocks  and  lines,  arbitrarily  decided  upon  in  the  course 
of  generations,  with  no  reference  whatever  to  merit  or 
achievement ;  it  is,  indeed,  no  disadvantage  for  an  an- 
cestor to  have  done  distinguished  deeds  for  the  nation 
or  to  have  written  distinguished  books,  but  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  no  disadvantage  for  the  ancestor  to 
be  without  distinction.  And  there  is  at  the  same  time 
a  fine  breadth  and  liberality  about  it  all ;  when  one  of 
the  oldest  and  finest  families  goes  into  the  making  of 
sausages,  and  makes  them  for  many,  many  years  and 
makes  millions  of  dollars  out  of  them,  it  does  not  hurt 
its  social  standing  in  the  least,  as  it  might  in  some 
more  narrow  city. 

The  intense  feeling  for  family  also  works  out  rather 
oddly  in  the  frequent  tying  up  of  family  property  to 
be  held  undivided  by  quite  a  number  of  heirs ;  and  the 
fact  that  such  cases  often  work  hardship  through  the 
inability  of  the  heirs  either  to  dispose  of  the  property 
or  to  receive  incomes  from  it,  does  not  at  all  tend  to 
discourage  the  custom.  A  friend  mentioned  in  casual 
conversation  the  other  day  that  she  was  born  on  Mount 

195 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Vernon  Street  and  had  only  recently  sold  her  one-ninth 
part  of  her  old  family  home,  and  that  she  had  done  it 
with  a  keen  wrench  of  feeling.  You  will  not  infre- 
quently see  in  the  newspapers  advertisements  offering 
to  lend  money  to  heirs  on  their  undivided  estate  or 
their  future  inheritance. 

Family  is  the  common  possession  and  talk  of  youth 
and  age,  of  men  and  women  and  boys  and  girls.  An- 
cestors are  mulled  over  in  all  ordinary  conversations. 
Only  this  evening,  as  I  walked  on  Beacon  Street  beside 
the  Common — literally  this  evening,  and  I  quote  liter- 
ally what  I  chanced  to  overhear;  indeed,  even  if  I 
wished  to  I  could  not  invent  anything  that  would  so 
well  illustrate  what  I  am  setting  down — only  this  eve- 
ning, as  two  men  passed  me,  one  was  saying :  ' '  His 
great-grandfather — "!  That  was  all.  It  was  but  a 
few  words  caught  in  passing.  But  in  no  other  city 
could  such  altogether  delightful  words  have  been 
heard. 

I  was  led  one  day  by  a  Boston  friend  to  a  lecture ; 
it  was  a  lecture  on  spiders ;  and  the  very  first  words 
of  the  lecturer  were :  ' '  The  LycosidaB  is  the  most  prom- 
inent family  we  have  in  Boston. ' '  And  there  came  to 
mind  a  verse  I  had  somewhere  heard,  a  verse  excellent 
because  so  really  illustrative : 

"Little  Miss  Beacon  Street 
Sat  on  her  window-seat, 
Eating  her  beans  and  brown  bread ; 
There  came  a  small  spider 
And  sat  down  beside  her — 
'You're  an  Argyroneta,'  she  said." 
196 


THE  BACK  BAY 

Lectures  are  themselves  the  very  essence  of  Boston, 
and  this  comes  from  the  time  when  lecturers,  mostly 
Bostonians,  went  forth  throughout  the  country,  up- 
lifting and  instructing  eager  audiences.  In  those 
days,  lecturers  were  held  to  be  representative  of  the 
highest  wisdom  and  lecturing  was  still  deemed  the 
most  admirable  way  of  delivering  wisdom — and  these 
two  beliefs  are  still  devoutly  held  in  Boston.  Where 
two  or  three  are  gathered  together  there  is  sure  to  be 
a  lecturer  in  the  midst  of  them ;  every  Bostonian  is  a 
lecturer  or  a  listener ;  the  excellent  habit  is  unescapa- 
ble.  Nothing  else  interests  Bostonians  as  lectures  do. 
The  summer  course,  the  fall  course,  the  winter  course, 
the  spring  course,  the  lectures  of  this,  that  and  the 
other  prophet,  are  always  occupying  their  time.  As  a 
Bostonian  said  to  me : ' 'If  you  just  sit  down  anywhere 
in  Boston  a  lecture  will  be  poured  into  your  ears.,, 
There  are  lectures  on  astronomy  and  atavism  and  art ; 
there  are  lectures  on  batrachians  and  Buddhism  and 
butter-making ;  there  are  cooking  lectures,  cosmos  lec- 
tures, curtain  lectures,  culture  lectures;  there  are 
lectures  on  duty  and  digestion,  on  philosophy  and 
Plato,  on  how  to  eat  and  sleep  and  think  and  dream ; 
there  are  lectures  on  everything  practical  and  imprac- 
tical. In  fact,  the  lectures  and  the  lecturers  are  innu- 
merable, and  the  Bostonians  have  many  local  authori- 
ties to  whom  they  listen  as  oracles.  As  winter  comes 
on  the  true  Bostonian  gathers  together  his  lecture 
cards  and  sorts  them,  and  hoards  them,  and  gloats 
over  them,  just  as  a  squirrel  gathers  and  hoards  his 
winter  nuts.    Lectures  are  nuts  to  Bostonians. 

197 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

I  remember  an  acquaintance  saying  one  afternoon, 
and  I  mention  it  because  it  is  simply  typical:  "Aren't 
you  going  to  So-and-so's  lecture  at  four  o'clock V9  and 
when  I  replied  that  I  was  not,  be  said  promptly: 
' i  Then,  of  course,  you  are  going  to  Thus-and-so  's  lec- 
ture this  evening  V9  It  would  take  the  last  sting  from 
death  if  a  Bostonian  could  be  assured  of  courses  of 
lectures  through  futurity. 

Holmes  loved  to  sit  down  and  write  a  poem  after 
any  lecture  that  especially  interested  him.  Turn  the 
leaves  of  his  volumes  of  verse  and  you  will  see  quite 
a  number  of  lengthy  poems  with  titles  declaring  them 
to  have  been  written  on  his  return  from  lectures. 

The  entire  idea  was  amazingly  helped  on  its  way  by 
the  foundation  of  the  Lowell  lectures,  three  quarters 
of  a  century  ago.  A  great  sum  was  left  by  one  of  the 
Lowell  family  for  the  sole  purpose  of  paying  lecturers 
to  talk  to  Bostonians,  with  the  typically  Bostonian  re- 
quest that  the  manager  should  always,  if  possible,  be 
a  Lowell.  Scores  of  free  lectures  are  delivered,  annu- 
ally, to  Bostonians  under  the  direction  of  the  Lowell 
Institute,  and  the  pace  thus  set  is  followed  so  enthusi- 
astically by  all  sorts  of  enthusiasts  and  associations 
that  there  are  hundreds  of  lectures  every  year. 

Second  only  to  lectures  in  popularity  are  concerts. 
Nothing,  indeed,  is  so  held  to  represent  real  culture, 
in  Boston,  as  a  devoted  knowledge  of  music.  There 
is  an  interest  which  amounts  almost  to  a  gentle  pathos 
in  a  Boston  musical  night — any  one  of  the  many  nights 
at  which  elect  music  is  worshiped  by  the  elect.  The 
hall  itself  (there  are  many  halls  in  Boston  where  music. 

198 


THE  BACK  BAY 

may  be  heard,  but  there  is  only  one  that  is  ' '  the ' '  hall) , 
the  hall  itself  is  angular  and  rectangular,  with  an  effect 
of  the  gaunt  and  the  gray,  and  there  is  a  gentle  general 
effect  of  age,  of  gray-haired  women  and  of  men  with 
domes  as  bare  as  that  of  their  own  State  House,  and  an 
interspersing  of  eye-glassed  students  holding  big  black 
books  in  which  they  devotedly  follow  the  score. 

If,  as  to  the  music  itself,  there  is  satisfaction  with 
a  high  degree  of  technical  correctness,  without  the  co- 
incident loveliness  of  which  the  composers  dreamed,  it 
would  simply  indicate  that  this  is  the  way  in  which 
Boston  prefers  music  to  be  given;  if  the  music  is  a 
shade  or  so  more  percussive  than  is  deemed  desirable 
elsewhere,  and  if  the  drum,  played  passionately,  is 
permitted  to  stand  most  markedly  for  music,  it  is  all 
as  it  should  be,  and  the  young  students  beam  with 
critical  joy,  and  there  is  a  gentle  nodding  of  elderly 
heads.  And,  after  all,  Boston  comes  naturally  by  a 
love  of  the  percussive,  for  at  her  Peace  Jubilee,  at  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War,  a  mighty  orchestra  and  a  choir 
of  ten  thousand  enthralled  audiences  of  fifty  thousand, 
while  twelve  cannon  thundered  in  unison  and  fifty  an- 
vils clanged  as  one.  I  should  never  think  of  criticis- 
ing Boston  music  any  more  than  I  should  think  of  criti- 
cising Boston  brown  bread :  each  is  something  inter- 
estingly typical  and  loyally  honored.  I  remember  a 
French  lady,  a  visitor,  who,  not  quite  getting  the  Bos- 
ton viewpoint,  asked  wonderingly,  "Why  do  they  go 
to  so  much  trouble  to  make  it?"  She  was  referring 
to  the  bread,  but  I  notice,  as  I  set  it  down,  that  the 
words  seem  equally  to  apply  to  the  music.    If  Boston 

199 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

should  ever  lose  her  chartering  idiosyncrasies,  her 
brown  bread,  her  baked  beans,  her  fish  balls,  her  music, 
her  lectures,  she  would  cease  to  be  Boston. 

Lectures  and  music  are  naturally  included  in  the 
subject  of  the  Back  Bay  because  it  is  at  the  edge  of  the 
Back  Bay  that  most  of  the  halls  for  music  and  lectures 
are  located,  and  especially  along  Huntington  Avenue. 

At  Copley  Square,  where  Huntington  Avenue  be- 
gins, there  begins  also  the  most  interesting  develop- 
ment of  modern  Boston,  present-day  Boston,  for,  rang- 
ing and  spreading  out,  through  and  beyond  the  Back 
Bay  and  into  the  adjoining  Fenlands,  is  building  after 
building,  educational  or  institutional;  hospital  build- 
ings, philanthropic  buildings,  and,  most  notable  of  all, 
a  wide  range  of  school  and  college  buildings ;  and  the 
average  of  architectural  beauty  is  admirably  high. 

Facing  into  Copley  Square  is  the  Boston  Public 
Library,  and,  u  Built  by  the  people  and  dedicated  to 
the  advancement  of  learning' '  is  the  noble  motto  over 
the  main  entrance  of  this  truly  beautiful  building. 
And  it  is  a  thoroughly  good  American  library,  ready  to 
give  due  honor  to  the  literature,  the  science,  the  art 
of  America  as  well  as  of  Europe.  Set  into  the  sides 
of  the  building  are  panels  giving  famous  names  in 
groups  of  similar  kinds,  and  American  names  are 
honored  with  a  quiet  matter-of-f  actness.  With  Titian 
and  Velasquez  and  Hogarth,  one  sees  the  name  of 
West.  With  Boyle  is  joined  the  name  of  Eumford. 
With  Sterne  and  St.  Pierre  and  Chateaubriand  stands 
the  name  of  Irving.  Macaulay  is  between  Prescott 
and  Bancroft.    Calvin  and  Wesley  keep  company  with 

200 


THE  BACK  BAY 

the  New  England  Mather.  And  with  Palladio  and 
Wren  the  name  of  the  Bostonian  architect  Bulfinch  is 
conjoined. 

The  building  is  not  only  admirable  in  proportions, 
but  extremely  fine  in  details,  and  one  need  not  pay  at- 
tention to  such  minor  points  as  the  confusion  of 
Strozzi  lanterns  at  the  entrance  or  to  the  pedestaled 
marble  lady  who,  as  Bostonians  like  to  point  out,  is 
offering  you  a  marble  grape-fruit. 

Even  finer  than  the  exterior  is  the  interior,  with  its 
welcoming  stairway  with  its  splendor  of  tawny  mar- 
ble, and  as  you  mount  the  stairs  you  pass  by  those  dig- 
nified memorials  to  the  Civil  War  Volunteers  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, two  great  marble  lions,  one  of  them  with 
a  broken  marble  tail  that  has  been  so  cleverly  mended 
as  in  itself  to  represent  positive  art ! 

Mounting  to  the  upper  hallway  you  move  past  a 
series  of  exquisite  mural  panel  paintings  by  Puvis  de 
Chavannes;  decorative  figures  in  soft  lavenders  and 
greens,  figures  walking  or  floating  against  back- 
grounds of  soft  gray  or  in  an  ethereal  blue  that  is  only 
like  the  perfect  blue  of  the  clear  sky  of  a  wonderful 
morning;  and  all  is  so  soft  and  easy  and  sweet  and 
graceful  as  to  make  these  murals  an  achievement  in 
repression  and  beauty.  Turning  from  the  upper  hall 
to  the  right,  one  comes  to  glorious  pictures  by  Abbey, 
high-set,  frieze-like,  around  all  the  upper  part  of  a 
great  room  that  is  pilastered  and  pan  ]  d  with  dark 
oak,  and  ceilinged  with  dark  oak  beaA.?3  picked  out 
with  gold.  It  is  a  shadowy  room,  a  room  intentionally 
dark,  to  give  relief  and  foreground  to  the  pictures, 

201 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

which,  representing  the  Quest  of  the  Holy  Grail,  are 
glories  of  vivid  coloring;  knights  and  ladies  and 
churchmen  in  pomp  of  purple  and  gold  and  bright 
scarlet.  And  on  the  floor  above  this  is  Sargent's 
* '  Frieze  of  the  Prophets. ' ' 

Within  the  quadrangle  of  the  library  is  an  inner 
court  that  is  so  reposeful,  so  charming,  so  delightful, 
with  its  arcaded  space  around  its  central  fountain,  as 
to  make  it  an  esthetic  architectural  triumph. 

Facing  the  library,  at  the  opposite  end  of  Copley 
Square  (and  like  the  squares  of  most  cities  this  is  not 
at  all  a  square  in  shape),  is  a  building  which,  some 
years  ago,  was  looked  upon  as  an  architectural  wonder. 
It  is  a  huge  church,  a  massive  pile  of  yellows  and 
browns,  and,  built  in  mid- Victorian  times,  was  meant 
to  follow  some  of  the  ancient  churchly  architecture  of 
Europe.  Until  recent  years,  Bostonians  dwelt  with 
pride  on  every  detail  of  this  great  Trinity  Church, 
and  would  insist  on  pointing  out  to  visitors  every  de- 
tail of  design  and  workmanship.  But  a  change  of 
taste  has  gone  over  the  entire  country,  including  Bos- 
ton, and  now  it  is  quite  realized  that  the  church  is  not 
beautiful,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  its  great  central 
tower  is  tantalizingly  remindful  of  that  of  Tewksbury 
and  that  its  little  outside  stairway  is  tantalizingly  re- 
mindful of  a  Norman  stair  of  remarkable  beauty  at 
Canterbury — tantalizingly,  but  how  different  they 
are! 

The  Back  Bay  and  the  Fenlands,  one  merging  im- 
perceptibly into  the  other,  are  really  one  great  flat 
region  recovered  from  the  swamps,  the  Fenlands  pos- 

202 


<  <-  «  i    * 

•  e  i  r 


JHE  BACK  BAY 

sessing  the  great  advantage  of  having  a  great  part 
kept  as  parkways,  with  water  and  bridges.  The  resi- 
dences of  the  Fenland  are  of  a  more  interesting  aver- 
age than  those  of  the  Bay — and  it  is  over  here,  in  the 
Fen  country,  that  Bobert  Grant  the  novelist  lives,  at 
211  Bay  State  Eoad.  How  delightfully  the  words 
"Fen"  and  "Fenlands"  bring  up  memories  of  the 
Boston  of  Old  England,  set  as  it  is  in  the  great  flat 
region  of  the  English  Fens ! 

Also  in  the  Fen  country,  and  not  far  from  Hunting- 
ton Avenue,  is  Fenway  Court,  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able homes  in  America,  built  by  Mrs.  Isabella  Gard- 
ner, who  dreamt  of  erecting  a  Venetian  palace  on 
this  level  Brenta-like  land,  and  realized  her  dream. 
It  was  a  romantic  plan  romantically  carried  out.  Mrs. 
Gardner  brought  across  the  ocean  actual  parts  and 
fragments  of  old  Italian  buildings,  that  the  basis 
should  be  actually  Italian,  and  here  she  built  her  Vene- 
tian palace,  and  filled  it  with  rare  and  costly  examples 
of  old-time  European  art. 

Not  far  from  this  are  the  buildings  of  the  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts,  impressive  of  front  toward  Huntington 
Avenue,  and  positively  beautiful  in  the  fagade  that 
looks  out  over  the  water  of  the  Fenway,  for  this  face 
is  stately  with  a  long  colonnade  of  great  pillars. 

The  contents  of  the  museum  are  of  admirable  aver- 
age ;  much  is  of  high  interest,  notably  the  paintings  of 
distinguished  Americans  of  the  past  by  distinguished 
American  painters  of  their  time.  Much  of  antique 
furniture  is  here,  largely  American,  and  it  is  displayed 
as  if  befitting  the  title  of  the  museum,  as  if  worthy,  as 

203 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

it  is,  of  place  among  other  beautiful  products  of  the 
fine  arts.  The  rooms  where  the  furniture  is  dis- 
played are  arranged  with  wise  harmony ;  a  table  of  a 
certain  period  is  likely  to  be  in  the  center,  with  furni- 
ture of  the  same  period — sideboard,  cupboard,  chairs 
— around  the  sides;  and  portraits  of  the  men  and 
women  of  the  period,  by  painters  of  the  period,  are  on 
the  walls. 

And  there  is  here  the  most  notable  collection  of  old 
American  silver  in  America,  admirable  examples,  in- 
cluding much  of  the  finest  work  of  that  admirable 
silversmith,  Paul  Eevere. 

A  great  area,  throughout  this  general  region,  is  so 
thick-dotted  with  educational  institutions  that  it  has 
begun  to  be  called  the  Students '  Quarter,  or,  as  some 
Bostonians  love  to  call  it,  "our  Latin  Quarter.' '  And 
all  this  has  no  reference  to  Cambridge,  which  is  across 
the  river  and  outside  the  city  limits ;  all  this  is  actually 
within  Boston,  and  Boston  is  very  proud  of  it. 

In  this  great  clump  of  Back  Bay  and  Fenland 
schools  there  are  already  some  twelve  thousand  stu- 
dents in  addition  to  the  Boston-born ;  and  the  students 
and  the  buildings  are  constantly  increasing  in  num- 
bers. It  is  fine,  too,  that  most  of  these  educational 
buildings  are  as  noteworthy,  architecturally,  as  are 
the  numerous  buildings  that  philanthropic  and  en- 
dowed organizations  have  built  in  this  general 
quarter. 

With  the  influence  of  all  these  schools,  added  to  the 
admitted  culture  of  generations,  one  might  expect  a 
complete  fastidiousness  in  general  speech:  and  yet, 

204 


THE  BACK  BAY 

throughout  all  Boston  there  is  a  general  and  amusing 
treatment  of  "rV\  In  the  first  place,  Bostonians 
eliminate  this  letter  altogether  from  a  host  of  words 
such  as  " Bunker,' '  which  is  always  given  as  if  it  were 
spelled  "Bunkah."  For  this  they  will  probably  say, 
and  rightly,  that  there  is  good  authority.  And  I  pre- 
sume that,  after  all,  they  can  show  excellent  authority 
for  their  thriftiness  with  these  discarded  "r's,"  for 
they  do  not  really  throw  them  away  or  really  mislay 
them,  but  use  them  on  words  that  do  not  show  the  let- 
ter. It  is  fascinating  to  hear  them  add  an  ar"  to  the 
end  of  "area,"  or  say  that  their  dog  "nors"  a  bone; 
it  is  fascinating  to  hear  them  speak  of  "standing  in 
awr";  it  is  fascinating  to  hear  a  highly-cultured  Bos- 
tonian,  a  Brahmin  of  Brahmins,  call  his  wife  "Bew- 
ler"  for  Beulah  or  say  "Anner"  for  Anna. 

It  was  a  Bostonian,  who,  having  traveled  and  ob- 
served and  realized,  remarked  quaintly,  of  the  succes- 
sion of  Quincys  called  Josiah — pronounced,  of  course, 
"Josiar" — that  the  line  did  not  go  on  from  sire  to 
son  but  "from  'Siar  to  'Siar'M 

Most  notable  of  all  the  educational  buildings  of  the 
Fenland  are  those  of  the  School  of  Medicine  of  Har- 
vard University;  for  Harvard,  instead  of  having  all 
its  buildings  in  Cambridge,  came  here  to  build  its 
school  for  doctors. 

The  buildings  are  of  marble ;  a  group  of  five,  fronted 
and  united  by  terraces  and  balustrades,  and  all  facing 
into  a  central  plaza  large  enough  to  give  stately  archi- 
tectural relief.  The  pillared  administration  building 
is  flanked  on  either  side  by  laboratory  buildings  and 

205 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  entire  group  forms  a  simple  and  beautiful  whole, 
with  an  air  of  noble  permanence. 

One  Sunday  afternoon  I  was  walking  near  these 
buildings  when  I  noticed  people  running;  men  well 
garbed  and  women  well  gowned  were  running ;  a  lim- 
ousine drew  up  at  the  curb  and  two  men  and  a  woman 
leaped  from  it  and  ran ;  a  street  car  stopped  and  men 
and  women  tumbled  from  it  and  ran ;  it  was  not  mere 
hurrying,  but  actual  running,  and  all  ran  around  the 
open  end  of  the  Medical  School  plaza.  It  was  clear 
that  there  was  either  a  terrible  accident  or  a  fire — 
most  likely  one  of  those  noble  buildings,  apparently 
fireproof,  was  aflame ! — so  I  hurried  with  the  others 
and  rounded  the  corner,  and  all  were  rushing  for  a 
doorway — beside  which  was  a  notice  declaring  that 
there  was  to  be  a  Free  Public  Lecture,  that  the  doors 
were  open  at  3,  and  that  they  were  absolutely  to  be 
closed  at  4 :05 !  I  looked  at  my  watch — it  was  4 :03y2 
— and  I  understood  the  running.  But  I  think  I  never 
shall  be  able  to  understand  what  they  expected  the 
people  to  do  who  should  enter  at  3,  nor  why  the  clos- 
ing time  was  so  oddly  fixed  at  precisely  4 :05 ! 

As  I  looked  and  read  and  turned  away,  men  and 
women,  but  in  diminishing  number,  were  still  running 
up,  darting  past  me,  and  plunging  through  the  door. 
I  halted,  for  it  came  to  me  that  the  notice  did  not  men- 
tion either  the  lecturer's  name  or  his  subject — and 
what  a  fascinating  subject  it  must  be  to  draw  these 
prosperous  men  and  women  literally  on  the  run ! 

I  asked  a  man  of  well  over  sixty,  as  he  flew  by.  He 
glanced  at  me  reproachfully,  he  did  not  check  his 

206 


THE  BACK  BAY 

speed,  but  he  flung  back  over  his  shoulder  as  he 
plunged  at  the  door  some  words  that  absurdly  seemed 
to  end  in  "fat."  Clearly,  I  must  inquire  further  and 
must  not,  again,  try  to  check  any  one  near  the  door. 
It  was  4 :041/2.  I  saw  a  youth  come  bounding  on.  I 
hurried  toward  him  and  turned  beside  him  and,  falling 
into  his  stride,  asked  him  what  was  to  be  the  lecture. 
We  strode  together;  and  he  gasped,  "The  Assimila- 
tion of  Fats" !  With  that  he  dashed  at  the  door — he 
was  the  last  one  in — instantly  it  was  locked — the  next 
comer,  a  moment  too  late,  tried  the  handle  in  grieved 
futility — it  was  five  minutes  after  four. 


CHAPTEE  XVII 

HEIGHTS  REACHED  AND   KEPT 

N  a  forgotten  and  faded  part  of  Boston, 
somewhat  away  from  the  center  of  the 
city,  rises  a  hill  whose  top  is  green  with 
grass  and  thick  with  elms  and  lin- 
dens, and  on  whose  highest  point  stands 
a  monument  of  exceptionally  fine  de- 
sign; and  this  monument  marks  the  spot  of  a  great 
victory,  one  of  the  victories  of  Washington.  And  al- 
though it  was  a  military  victory  it  was  bloodless ;  al- 
though it  was  a  victory  of  immense  importance  to 
America  it  was  won  without  loss.  And  the  hill  is  still 
known  as  Dorchester  Heights,  just  as  it  was  when 
General  Washington  made  it  famous  at  the  time  of  the 
Evacuation  of  Boston. 

Before  the  Eevolution  the  height  was  a  place  of 
pleasant  resort,  and  John  Adams  mentions  in  his  diary 
that  on  one  evening  in  1769,  fifty-nine  toasts  were 
drunk  at  a  barbecue  and  feast  here  to  which  three  hun- 
dred guests  sat  down,  and  he  adds,  evidently  thinking 
that  if  fifty-nine  toasts  were  drunk  so  would  many  of 
the  people  naturally  be  expected  to  be,  that  "not  one 
person  was  intoxicated  or  near  it. ' ' 
After  the  Bevolutionary  days  this  general  region 

208 


HEIGHTS  BEACHED  AND  KEPT 

was  looked  upon  for  a  time  as  holding  great  possibili- 
ties of  residence,  and  wealth  and  aristocracy  were  ex- 
pected to  come,  and  a  big  hotel  was  even  built  here 
which,  however,  failed  to  succeed,  for  the  district 
failed  to  attract  the  expected  classes,  whereupon  the 
hotel  building  was  taken  over  by  the  very  opposite  of  a 
sparkling  hotel,  an  asylum  for  the  blind,  an  asylum 
that  gradually  became  very  famous  under  the  name  of 
Perkins — and  it  is  most  curious  that  the  wife  of  the 
most  distinguished  of  the  successive  heads  of  this 
blind  asylum  was  the  author  of  the  stirring  lines  be- 
ginning, "Mine  eyes  have  seen  the  glory  of  the  coming 
of  the  Lord ! ' ' — for  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  early  in 
her  life,  lived  here,  for  Doctor  Howe,  her  husband, 
was  long  the  superintendent.  But  even  the  asylum 
has  moved  elsewhere,  and  just  recently  the  building 
itself,  a  really  good-looking  structure,  was  torn  down 
and  its  material  all  sold.  It  was  a  satisfaction,  how- 
ever, to  learn  that  a  beautiful  central  stairway  was 
bought  by  a  Bostonian  who  wished  to  build  it  into  a 
house  of  his  own,  for  it  is  so  sadly  general  that  beauti- 
ful parts  of  fine  old  buildings  are  thrown  away  and 
burned  when  the  buildings  are  taken  down. 

The  district  at  present  has  not  much  to  attract  a 
visitor,  for  the  streets  and  buildings  are  almost  all 
quite  commonplace ;  although  even  an  otherwise  com- 
monplace district  deserves  appreciation  for  such  ef- 
forts to  save  its  old  trees  as  this  district  has  made, 
even  to  the  extent,  in  places,  of  encouraging  them  to 
live  even  when  surrounded  by  sidewalk  stones. 

It  was  early  in  the  Eevolution  that  Dorchester 

209 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Heights  became  famous.  "When  the  British  held  Bos- 
ton they  fortified  every  place  that  seemed  important 
to  the  defense  of  the  city,  and  then  settled  down  to 
await  developments.  Meanwhile,  with  a  large  Ameri- 
can army  so  dispersed  as  to  cover  every  possible  line 
of  approach,  it  was  a  difficult  matter  to  get  needed  pro- 
visions into  the  city,  and  when  ships  were  sent  off  on 
foraging  expeditions  it  was  not  safe  for  them  to  make 
landings  anywhere  on  the  New  England  coast,  for  the 
entire  countryside  was  in  arms.  All  this  caused  much 
hardship  and  suffering,  for  garrison  and  townsfolk 
alike,  and  plan  after  plan  was  evolved  by  the  British 
officers  for  advancing  upon  the  Americans  and  de- 
feating and  dispersing  them;  but  always  the  officers 
remembered  Bunker  Hill,  and  put  each  plan  aside  in 
hopes  of  finding  a  better  one  or  of  receiving  such 
powerful  reinforcements  as  would  give  to  an  attack 
the  probability  of  success.  And  as  they  waited  and 
planned  and  hesitated,  General  Washington  was  him- 
self constantly  planning  and  waiting  and  watching, 
eager  for  a  chance  to  drive  the  British  away.  Slowly 
advancing  here,  patiently  strengthening  a  defense 
there,  ceaselessly  studying  and  watching,  steadily  put- 
ting into  the  troops  the  discipline  and  patience  that 
they  needed,  he  came  to  see  where  a  possible  oppor- 
tunity lay.  And  that  opportunity  was  on  Dorchester 
Heights,  for  from  that  vantage  point  he  could  com- 
mand the  harbor  and  the  city — if  he  had  proper  guns. 
And  with  incredible  carelessness,  the  British  had 
failed  to  fortify  the  spot;  had  failed  even  to  place 
troops  there. 

210 


HEIGHTS  BEACHED  AND  KEPT 

But  although  there  was  no  British  obstacle,  there 
was  the  obstacle  that  lay  in  lack  of  equipment.  The 
Americans  had  no  cannon  except  some  minor  field- 
pieces.  They  had  no  siege  guns  of  sufficient  range  and 
caliber  to  sweep  the  harbor  even  if  the  height  were 
seized.  And  there  was  the  further  consideration  that 
heavy  guns  would  be  needed  even  in  holding  the 
height,  for  the  British  could  not  be  expected  to  make 
over  again  the  mistake  of  Bunker  Hill  and  send  lines 
of  practically  unsupported  troops  against  American 
entrenchments;  the  British  would  so  combine  heavy 
cannonading  with  assault  that,  unless  the  Americans 
should  have  proper  artillery,  the  heights  would  be  un- 
tenable and  the  Americans  would  be  compelled  to  re- 
treat; the  hill  would  then  be  thoroughly  entrenched, 
by  the  British,  against  attack  from  the  American  side, 
and  the  capture  of  the  city  would  be  almost  hopeless. 
So  Washington  knew  that  he  must  wait  for  big  guns 
before  he  could  dare  to  seize  the  heights,  and  mean- 
while he  could  only  hope  that  the  British  would  con- 
tinue to  be  so  confident  of  his  getting  no  big  guns  that 
they  would  not  themselves  take  possession  of  that 
vantage  point.  It  seems  incredible,  looking  back  at 
it,  that  this  prominent  hill,  just  at  the  edge  of  the 
city  (it  is  now  included  within  the  city  limits),  should 
have  escaped  occupation  by  either  side,  when  there 
were  thousands  of  British  soldiers  within  the  city  and 
thousands  of  Americans  hemming  the  city  in. 

From  the  first,  even  before  the  ultimate  seizure  of 
Dorchester  Heights  was  decided  upon,  the  possession 
of  heavy  guns  had  been  recognized  as  of  the  highest 

211 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

importance  to  the  besiegers.  The  guns  were  got ;  and 
their  getting  was  a  remarkable  achievement,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  any  war  in  history. 

The  man  to  whom  the  task  was  entrusted  was  young 
Henry  Knox,  afterwards  to  become  the  famous  Gen- 
eral Knox;  and  his  fame  and  advancement,  as  the 
trusted  artillery  officer,  the  trusted  friend  and  helper 
of  Washington,  began  with  his  selection  for  this  task. 

Not  much  of  a  soldier,  one  might  in  those  early  days 
have  thought,  for  his  occupation  had  been  the  peaceful 
one  of  bookseller !  He  had  begun  business  for  him- 
self in  Boston,  in  the  early  1770  's,  with  an  initial  im- 
portation of  books  to  the  value  of  three  hundred  and 
forty  pounds,  which  total  was  steadily  increased  until 
it  was  over  two  thousand  pounds,  and  his  business 
became  flourishing  and  his  shop  was  known  as  a  pop- 
ular meeting-place  for  the  best  men  and  women  of 
the  city.  Then  financial  trouble  came  to  him  as  it 
came  to  all  the  business  men  of  Boston,  through  the 
threatened  break  with  England,  the  closing  of  the  port, 
and  the  general  disorganization  of  trade.  When  the 
war  actually  began,  Knox  put  his  ruined  business 
aside  and  promptly  joined  the  American  forces. 
Throughout  the  war  he  forgot  all  about  his  books — he 
was  General  Knox,  the  great  master  of  artillery.  And 
it  is  pleasant  to  know  that  when  the  war  was  at  length 
over,  and  he  might  fairly  have  repudiated  all  of  his 
debts  to  English  publishers  because  his  financial 
trouble  had  come  altogether  from  the  British  Govern- 
ment and  because  his  shop  was  robbed  and  looted  by 
British  soldiers,  he  did  not  like  to  hold  the  English 

212 


HEIGHTS  BEACHED  AND  KEPT 

publishers  responsible,  and  continued  to  make  pay- 
ments on  these  pre-Bevolutionary  debts  long  after  the 
war  was  over. 

Knox  was  extremely  handsome  and  likable  as  well 
as  capable.  In  fact,  his  capacity  was  recognized  from 
the  beginning.  He  had  married  the  daughter  of  an 
aristocrat,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  her  family,  and 
was  so  highly  thought  of  that  strong  efforts  were 
made  to  attach  him  to  the  English  before  he  could  join 
the  Kevolutionists.  That  he  was  an  active  member  of 
the  handsomely  uniformed  local  organization  known 
as  the  Grenadier  Guards,  and  second  in  command, 
made  him  of  practical  promise  as  a  soldier ;  and  when 
it  was  learned  that  he  would  not  fight  for  England, 
General  Gage  peremptorily  forbade  him  to  leave  Bos- 
ton. But  his  wife  quilted  his  sword  into  the  lining 
of  his  cloak  and  he  escaped  from  the  city  in  disguise 
and  reached  the  American  lines. 

From  the  first,  Washington  liked  him  and  he  liked 
Washington.  Washington  needed  a  man  who  could 
be  trusted  to  get  cannon.  Here  was  Henry  Knox, 
than  whom  no  man  was  more  dependable.  It  was  a 
supreme  opportunity  for  both.  Crown  Point  and 
Ticonderoga  had  been  captured  ("In  the  name  of 
Jehovah  and  the  Continental  Congress !"),  and  there 
were  many  cannon,  at  those  two  adjacent  forts,  ready 
to  be  used;  and  Knox  was  told  to  go  and  get  them. 
And  although  it  was  a  tremendous  undertaking  he 
started  off  without  a  doubt  of  success. 

On  his  way  to  Ticonderoga  there  was  one  of  the 
curious  meetings  of  history,  for  on  a  stormy  winter 

213 


THE  BOOK  OE  BOSTON 

night,  on  the  border  of  Lake  George,  Knox  met  Major 
Andre,  who  was  on  his  way  as  a  prisoner  to  Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania — this  being,  of  course,  an  earlier  cap- 
ture than  the  later  fatal  one.  The  two  young  men 
spent  a  pleasant  evening  together,  for  they  had  tastes 
in  common  and  were  alike  bright  and  agreeable,  and 
in  the  morning  they  parted — only  to  meet  again  when 
Andre  was  once  more  a  prisoner.  And  it  was  severe 
suffering  for  Knox,  long  afterward,  remembering  this 
pleasant  winter  meeting  beside  Lake  George,  to  sit 
as  a  member  of  the  court  martial  that  found  it  in- 
evitable to  condemn  Andre  to  death. 

Knox  reached  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point  and 
found  the  cannon  there.  And  we  still  may  read  his 
fascinating  inventory.  There  were  14  mortars  and 
cohorns,  brass  and  iron,  from  41/2/'  to  13"  diameter  of 
bore;  there  were  two  iron  howitzers;  there  were  43 
cannon,  from  3-pounders  to  18-pounders.  There  was 
thus  the  formidable  number  of  59  guns  in  all,  with  a 
total  formidable  weight  of  119,900  pounds!  And 
some  of  the  18-pounders  weighed  as  high  as  5000 
pounds  each. 

This  enormous  weight  of  artillery  Knox  was  to 
convey  to  Boston  without  the  loss  of  a  single  unneces- 
sary hour.  He  was  to  take  it  through  miles  and  miles 
of  wild  wilderness,  by  a  rough  road  which  was  prac- 
tically no  road  at  all,  in  mid- winter ;  he  was  to  go  right 
across  the  Berkshires;  and  those  who  have  motored 
over  those  splendid  hills  in  summer  on  perfect  roads, 
and  know  what  heights  and  grades  there  are,  will  some- 

214 


HEIGHTS  EEACHED  AND  KEPT 

what  appreciate  how  gigantic  was  the  task  confront- 
ing Knox,  of  dragging  one  hundred  and  twenty  thou- 
sand pounds  of  cannon  over  the  mountain  trails, 
through  snow  and  ice  and  storm.  And  it  would  be 
hard  to  find  words  more  brave  and  confident  than 
those  he  wrote  to  Washington ;  not  over-confident,  not 
boastful,  for  he  merely  "hoped";  but  we  may  be  sure 
that  Washington,  reading  the  message,  felt  no  doubts ; 
Knox  wrote,  telling  of  finding  the  guns,  and  said :  "I 
hope  in  sixteen  or  seventeen  days'  time  to  be  able  to 
present  to  Your  Excellency  a  noble  train  of  artillery. ' ' 
And  his  use  of  the  word  "noble" — what  a  touch  it 
gives!  That  word,  alone,  would  show  the  bravely 
romantic  strain  in  Knox.  He  did  not  say  "big"  or 
"heavy"  or  "important"  or  "much-needed,"  but  in- 
stinctively used  the  delightful  word  "noble" — "a 
noble  train  of  artillery!" 

Knox  had  been  instructed  by  Washington  as  to  how 
many  horses  to  use,  but  there  on  the  spot  he  gave  up 
all  idea  of  horses,  being  the  kind  of  man  who  could  as- 
sume the  responsibility  of  altering  instructions  when 
it  seemed  advisable  to  do  so,  and  he  wrote  to  Wash- 
ington that  he  had  procured  eighty  yoke  of  oxen  in- 
stead. He  wrote  from  Albany  on  January  5th,  ea- 
gerly impatient  of  a  delay  through  a  "cruel  thaw" 
which  made  it  temporarily  impossible  to  cross  the 
Hudson — which,  to  our  amazement,  we  find  had  to  be 
crossed  "four  times  from  Lake  George  to  this  town!" 
And  from  the  Hudson  he  at  length  struck  across 
the  country,  and  over  the  great  heights,  from  Kinder- 

215 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

hook  to  Great  Barrington  and  thence  to  Springfield, 
from  which  place  he  went  triumphantly  on  to  Boston. 
It  was  an  amazing  achievement. 

Day  by  day  Washington  had  feared  that  the  British 
would  seize  the  heights  of  Dorchester.  All  he  could 
do,  as  he  waited,  was  to  put  in  readiness  bales  of 
screwed  hay  and  fascines  of  white  birch,  ready  for  the 
making  of  redoubts — the  white  birch  that  even  now 
springs  up  so  freely  all  over  the  untillable  parts  of 
eastern  Massachusetts.  The  weather  continued  so 
cold,  and  the  ground  so  deeply  frozen,  that  there 
seemed  no  chance  to  intrench  on  Dorchester,  and  sur- 
face redoubts  were  therefore  all  that  could  be  pre- 
pared for.  And  there  was  moral,  severity  as  well  as 
the  severity  of  winter,  as  shown  by  General  Orders 
of  a  winter  day  early  in  1776  positively  forbidding  not 
only  the  soldiers,  but  the  officers  as  well,  to  play  cards 
or  other  games  of  chance,  for  "At  this  time  of  public 
distress,  men  may  find  enough  to  do  in  the  service  of 
God  and  their  country,  without  abandoning  themselves 
to  vice  and  immorality." 

With  the  arrival  of  Knox  and  the  cannon  the  mili- 
tary situation  was  changed.  It  was  now  but  a  matter 
of  bravely  and  cautiously  making  the  final  move.  And 
on  the  night  of  March  4,  the  move  was  made. 

It  was  a  moonlight  night.  The  British  were  un- 
watchfully  asleep,  refusing  to  let  more  than  their 
pickets  and  patrols  be  disturbed  by  a  severe  cannonad- 
ing which  was  kept  up  by  the  Americans  from  various 
points  about  the  city  to  draw  attention  from  the  send- 
ing of  a  large  number  of  men  and  wagons  and  guns 

216 


HEIGHTS  EEACHED  AND  KEPT 

to  Dorchester,  where  the  steep  height  was  mounted 
and  defensive  preparations  instantly  begun.  It  was 
a  literal  proving  that  "the  heights  by  great  men 
reached  and  kept  are  not  attained  by  sudden  flight," 
but  that  they,  while  their  opponents  slept,  were  toil- 
ing upward  in  the  night.  Throughout  the  night  the 
Americans  worked  with  intense  energy,  and  when 
morning  came  there  was  a  redoubt-crowned  hill,  with 
soldiers  and  guns.  The  British  gazed  at  it  in  amaze- 
ment and  soon  realized  that  Washington  had  deci- 
sively outwitted  them,  for  they  quickly  discovered 
that  his  position  commanded  the  harbor  and  the  city. 
It  has  never,  I  think,  been  sufficiently  understood, 
in  regard  to  Washington's  siege  of  Boston,  that  he 
came  to  the  task,  not  as  a  stranger  to  that  city  but 
with  a  close  knowledge  of  Boston  localities.  As  a 
young  officer,  fresh  from  the  campaign  of  Braddock, 
a  great  military  movement  with  whose  every  detail 
he  had  been  familiar,  he  had  been  sent  to  Boston,  in 
1756,  on  military  matters  and  to  tell  Governor  Shirley 
the  circumstances  of  the  death  of  Shirley's  son  on 
the  Monongahela.  At  that  time,  Washington  stayed 
ten  days  in  Boston,  and  not  only  mingled  with 
the  best  society  of  the  town,  but  made  it  a  point, 
with  his  military  experience  and  ambitions,  to  see 
Boston  thoroughly,  even  to  the  extent  of  visiting 
Castle  William,  out  in  the  harbor.  He  could  not  well 
have  had  any  definite  premonition,  twenty  years  be- 
fore the  Eevolution;  but  none  the  less,  born  soldier 
that  he  was,  he  acquired  such  local  knowledge  as  made 
Boston  and  its  defenses  familiar  ground. 

217 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

And,  too,  he  came  to  the  siege  with  full  understand- 
ing of  British  officers  and  soldiers,  of  British  methods 
and  ways  of  thought,  of  a  certain  blundering  and  un- 
watchf ul  bravery  which  marked  their  methods ;  he  had 
learned  all  this  from  his  close  association  with  Brad- 
dock  and  his  officers,  and  the  knowledge  thus  gained 
gave  him  such  an  insight  into  the  workings  of  the 
English  military  mind  as  made  it  possible  for  him  to 
plan  with  success  for  Dorchester;  counting,  first,  on 
British  inaction,  and  next  on  his  own  preparations  to 
meet  their  belated  activity. 

Washington  fully  expected  an  attack  on  his  vital 
position  at  Dorchester.  General  Howe  fully  expected 
to  make  one,  and  Lord  Percy  was  hurried  toward  Dor- 
chester with  twenty-four  hundred  men.  The  assem- 
bling of  this  force  was  witnessed  not  only  by  the 
American  army,  but  by  the  people  of  the  city,  who 
gathered  in  massed  throngs  on  the  neighboring  hills. 

It  was  a  steep  ascent  to  the  American  position; 
it  is  steep  even  now,  although  much  of  the  ground 
round  about  has  been  graded  and  leveled;  it  was  too 
steep  for  the  successful  depression  of  artillery  in 
those  early  days,  and  so  the  Americans  made  ready, 
not  only  with  their  rifles,  but  with  barrels  of  stone  and 
sand  to  roll  down  on  Percy's  men  as  they  should  come 
up  the  hill.  But  only  a  few  of  Percy's  men  reached 
even  the  foot  of  the  hill,  for  a  heavy  rain  and  storm 
came  on,  with  so  high  a  wind  and  such  rough  water 
and  dangerous  surf  that  the  landing  of  the  English 
troops  to  make  an  attack  became  impossible.  The 
storm  continued  all  that  day,  and  all  the  following 

218 


HEIGHTS  BEACHED  AND  KEPT 

night  and  the  next  day,  and  when  it  ceased  the  Ameri- 
cans had  made  their  position  so  strong  that  it  was  ab- 
solutely useless  to  attack  it.  And  Washington  could 
now  at  any  moment  cannonade  Boston. 

Washington  had  been  specifically  authorized  by 
Congress  to  attack  Boston  even  though  the  town  might 
thereby  be  destroyed.  General  Howe,  appreciating 
to  the  full  the  new  gravity  of  his  position,  frankly 
threatened  to  burn  the  town  if  an  attack  should  be 
made.  But  Howe  knew  that  his  position  had  sud- 
denly become  hopeless ;  he  was  trapped  and  was  ready 
for  an  accommodation ;  and  Washington,  for  his  part, 
could  not  bear  to  have  the  loyal  city  destroyed.  There 
was  some  difficulty  in  reaching  an  agreement  between 
the  two  leaders,  for,  such  being  sometimes  the  ab- 
surdities of  practical  affairs,  Howe  would  not  ad- 
dress Washington  in  those  early  days  as  an  acknowl- 
edged General,  and  Washington  would  not  permit 
himself  to  be  addressed  in  any  other  way.  However, 
what  may  be  called  a  gentlemen's  agreement  was 
unofficially  arranged,  by  which  Howe  was  promptly 
to  evacuate  the  city  and  Washington  was  to  refrain 
from  using  his  guns.  There  was  almost  two  weeks  of 
preparation  for  the  departure,  with  the  Americans 
watchfully  waiting,  and  on  March  17th  the  British 
fleet  sailed  away,  dropping  out  of  the  harbor  in  long 
procession,  bearing  eleven  thousand  troops  and  one 
thousand  Boston  refugees;  going  to  Halifax,  these 
refugees,  self -condemned  and  unhappy  exiles;  and 
ever  since  has  "Go  to  Halifax' '  been  an  opprobrious 
term  in  most  of  America,  just  as  I  have  noticed  the 

219 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

word  " Hessian' '  still  used  opprobriously  down  in  Vir- 
ginia. 

What  a  spectacle  must  the  sailing  of  the  British 
fleet  have  been.  There  were  as  many  as  one  hundred 
and  seventy  ships,  so  some  of  the  descriptions  have 
it,  and  soldiers  and  civilians,  men  and  women  and 
children,  crowded  every  vantage  point,  every  house- 
top and  hill,  to  see  the  ships  move  sullenly  away  and 
watch  the  white  sails  disappear  in  the  distance. 

And  that  was  how  Washington  won  Boston;  won  it 
with  superbness  of  victory,  completeness  of  success; 
won  it  without  loss  of  life  except  such  as  now  and 
then  had  come  from  the  clashing  of  outposts ;  won  it, 
in  the  final  analysis,  through  discerning  the  capacity 
of  Henry  Knox  and  the  importance  of  Dorchester 
Heights.  And  that  is  why  this  hill,  situated  amid 
what  are  now  commonplace  surroundings,  takes  on 
the  high  aspect  of  romantic  and  vital  history.  But 
even  as  thoughts  came  to  me  of  the  contrast  between 
the  romantic  past  and  the  commonplace  present,  the 
picturesque  appeared,  for,  as  I  walked  about  the  hill, 
two  Eoman  Catholic  nuns  suddenly  appeared,  passing 
slowly  by,  each  wearing  her  headdress  of  white  and 
her  kirtle  of  blue,  each  with  the  great,  plain,  starched 
linen  headdress  pinned  tightly  about  the  lines  of  the 
face.  It  was  as  if  they  had  serenely  walked  out  of 
Normandy  only  to  walk  serenely  around  the  corner 
into  Normandy  again,  on  this  American  hill. 

The  height  is  topped  by  a  shapely,  impressive,  fit- 
ting monument,  of  white  marble,  with  a  steeple-like 
marble  top  that  in  shape  is  like  the  steeple  of  some 

220 


HEIGHTS  BEACHED  AND  KEPT 

admirable  old  American  meeting-house ;  an  admirable 
idea  admirably  executed.  And  this  hill,  with  its 
space  of  greenery  about  the  monument  carefully  pre- 
served, is  in  itself  a  noble  monument  to  American 
genius  and  patriotism.  It  is  seldom  seen  by  Bosto- 
nians,  although  it  can  readily  be  reached  in  less  than 
half  an  hour  from  the  center  of  the  city,  and  the 
reason  for  neglect  is  probably  that  the  victory  of 
Dorchester  was  won  without  the  bloodshed  that  seems 
to  be  needed  to  make  a  picturesque  appeal  to  most 
people.    It  was  a  victory  of  brains,  not  blood. 

There  is  a  splendid  portrait  of  Knox,  by  Gilbert 
Stuart,  that  is  proudly  preserved  in  Boston  in  the 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts.  Few  things  are  better  for  a 
country  than  the  possession  of  admirable  paintings 
of  these  of  its  citizens  who  have  done  great  deeds; 
and  here  is  the  real  Knox.  As  you  look  at  him  you 
see  at  once  that  of  course  he  would  get  those  guns ! 
Of  course  he  would  do  whatever  he  set  out  to  do. 
Here  he  stands,  alive  and  alert,  one  hand  on  his  hip 
and  the  other  resting  upon  a  cannon,  and  thus  clev- 
erly, as  Stuart  meant  it,  concealing  the  absence  of 
two  fingers,  lost  not  in  battle,  but  in  a  gunning  acci- 
dent before  the  war.  Knox  looks  out  of  the  canvas  as 
if  still  alive ;  masterful,  capable,  good-humored,  firm, 
self-controlled,  efficient;  a  handsome  man,  too,  with 
high  and  heavy  eyebrows  and  florid  face;  and  he 
wears  his  uniform,  of  the  mellowest  of  buff  and  the 
deepest  of  blue,  with  an  air !  Boston  is  fortunate  in- 
deed in  her  mementoes  of  Dorchester  Heights,  for 
not  only  has  she  the  Heights  themselves,  but  she  has 

221 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

Gilbert  Stuart's  paintings  of  the  two  men  to  whom 
the  victory  was  owing— she  has  his  most  famous 
Washington,  and  this  superb  portrait  of  Knox. 


Mi 


mt' 


CHAPTEE  XVin 


COLLEGES  RED  AND  COMMON  GREEN 


Jr-U 


|0  people  in  general,  away  from 
Boston,  Harvard  means  Cam- 
bridge and  Cambridge  Harvard ; 
the  names  are  used  as  if  prac- 
tically interchangeable ;  al- 
though, as  a  matter  of  fact, 
every  one  knows  that  there  is 
at  least  something  in  Cambridge 
that  is  not  included  within  the 
university — for  is  there  not  the 
home  of  Longfellow!  Another 
general  idea  is  that  Cambridge  is  part  of  Boston, 
whereas  in  reality  Cambridge  is  a  separate  city,  al- 
though it  is  just  on  the  other  side  of  the  Charles  and 
ought,  for  various  reasons,  to  be  included  within  Bos- 
ton limits.  To  most  intents  and  purposes  it  is  really 
a  part  of  Boston,  and  Bostonians  so  consider  it. 

There  is  really  a  great  deal  of  Cambridge  outside 
of  Harvard.  There  is  Badcliff  e,  that  active  and  grow- 
ing college  for  young  women ;  and  there  is  a  thriving 
city  besides,  with  numerous  features  of  interest.  It 
may  be  regretted  that  so  much  of  the  city  is  painted 
from  the  same  pot  of  paint,  a  dingy  drab,  that  has 
been  used  on  the  houses  of  most  of  Boston's  suburbs, 

223 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

for  dingy  drab  as  a  permeative  color  is  not  inspiring; 
but  after  all,  that  is  a  minor  point. 

Cambridge  is  a  busy  city,  with  its  student  life  and 
its  active  Harvard  and  Radcliffe,  but  as  I  think  of 
it  there  comes,  for  the  moment,  in  place  of  the  picture 
of  its  business  and  social  and  educational  life,  that  of 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  cemeteries,  in  every  re- 
spect restful,  as  a  beautiful  cemetery  ought  to  be; 
that  of  Mount  Auburn.  For  Mount  Auburn  repre- 
sents so  much  of  the  best  history  of  Boston,  holds  so 
much  of  the  dust  of  Boston  genius. 

It  occupies  a  great  area  of  gently  rolling  land,  on 
the  farther  edge  of  Cambridge;  it  is  thickly  dotted 
with  trees,  it  is  charming  with  birds  and  squirrels, 
there  are  fountains  tossing  their  water  high,  and  there 
are  great  beds  of  flowers ;  and  it  is  astonishing  what 
a  number  of  famous  New  Englanders  have  found  their 
resting-place  here.  Here  lies  James  Eussell  Lowell, 
under  a  dark-colored  stone,  amid  a  group  of  other 
Lowells  who  are  gathered  about  him,  including  sev- 
eral who  died  in  the  Civil  War.  Not  far  away  is  the 
little  headstone  which  marks  the  grave  of  Motley. 
Near  Motley  is  the  dignified  tomb  of  Longfellow,  and 
close  at  hand  are  the  graves  of  Parkman  and  Holmes. 

It  is  amazing ;  for  this  notable  group  of  men  were 
practically  neighbors  and  friends  and  contemporaries 
while  living,  and  now  they  are  neighbors  in  their 
final  rest.  So  close-gathered  are  they  within  this 
great  cemetery  that  they  might  almost  be  under  one 
monument !  And,  were  it  not  for  the  Concord  group, 
such  a  monument  might  almost  stand  to  the  memory 

224 


"COLLEGES  RED  AND  COMMON  GREEN" 

of  New  England  literature.  Seldom,  elsewhere,  has 
there  been  such  a  close  concentration  of  literary  fame. 

On  the  way  back  into  Cambridge,  Elmwood  is 
passed,  the  home  of  Lowell,  the  house  where  he  was 
born,  and  where  he  lived  his  life  of  honored  achieve- 
ment, and  where  he  died;  an  attractive  old  Colonial 
house,  with  a  fetching  line,  on  either  side  of  the  door, 
of  low  box-bushes  shaded  by  great  elms  which  are 
fading  away,  like  innumerable  other  beautiful  elms 
here  in  Cambridge  and  elsewhere  in  New  England, 
under  the  attacks  of  the  destructive  descendants  of 
that  imported  moth  that  won  dubious  fame  for  the 
Harvard  professor  who  carelessly  allowed  it  to  fly 
away  after  his  experiments.  Countless  elms  have 
already  perished  from  the  ravages  of  the  gypsy  moths, 
themselves  of  more  than  countless  number;  but  at 
least  every  American  member  of  that  family  of  moths 
can  unquestioningly,  if  there  is  any  satisfaction  in 
the  fact,  trace  his  descent  from  the  moth  who  was 
bred  at  Harvard. 

Lowell  was  not  the  first  famous  inhabitant  of  his 
beautiful  house,  for  it  has  the  distinction  of  having 
been  the  home  of  the  very  last  of  the  royal  governors 
of  Massachusetts,  and,  also  before  it  became  the 
Lowell  home,  it  was  that  of  Elbridge  Gerry,  the  poli- 
tician whose  ambition  was  to  be  known  as  a  mighty 
statesman,  and  who  really  won  high  place,  but  who 
succeeded  only  in  sending  his  name  down  to  posterity 
linked  with  the  notorious  Gerrymander. 

In  Lowell's  time  it  was  deemed  a  mere  nothing  to 
walk  from  Cambridge  into  Boston  and  back;  Lowell 

225 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

himself  often  did  it ;  and  even  the  ladies  of  Cambridge 
used  frequently  to  walk  into  Boston  to  do  their  shop- 
ping and  then  would  likewise  return  on  foot.  Some- 
how, the  people  of  those  days  managed  to  accomplish 
a  great  deal  without  motor-cars  or  trolleys ;  in  these 
degenerate  times  it  is  considered  very  tiring  to  most 
people  to  walk,  not  from  Boston — that  would  be  im- 
possible!— but  even  the  short  distance  from  Cam- 
bridge Common  to  Lowell's  house  and  back. 

A  little  farther  toward  the  center  of  Cambridge 
is  the  house  that  was  long  the  home  of  Longfellow,  a 
beautiful  old  Colonial  building,  dignified  in  its  buff 
and  white,  with  its  plain  pilasters,  its  dormered  and 
balustraded  roof,  its  fine  chimneys,  its  generous  lines, 
its  terraced  front.  The  terrace  wall  is  thick-greened 
with  ivy,  great  elms  shade  the  house  and  grounds,  and 
along  the  sidewalk  line  is  a  high  hedge  of  lilacs.  Lilac 
hedges,  indeed,  are  a  delightful  characteristic  of  Cam- 
bridge, and  one  which  I  do  not  remember  having 
noticed  as  a  feature  in  any  other  town. 

It  has  somewhat  become  the  fashion  among  certain 
classes  to  deem  Longfellow  a  poet  of  insignificance, 
which  is  as  much  of  a  mistake  as  to  deem  him  among 
the  very  greatest.  He  put  so  much  of  beauty  and 
sweetness  and  fine  Americanism  into  his  poetry  as  to 
deserve  high  place  in  the  regard  of  the  world  and 
particularly  in  that  of  his  own  country.  His  excel- 
lent English  is  always  so  excellently  simple  that  some 
think  it  is  a  sign  of  inferiority !  But  even  Browning 
thought  no  less  of  him  on  that  account,  but  loved  both 
his  poetry  and  himself,  and  walked  the  London  streets 

226 


"COLLEGES  EED  AND  COMMON  GKEEN" 

with  him  in  eager  talk — the  English  poet  literally  arm 
in  arm  with  the  American ! 

Distinguished  though  any  house  would  be  by  the 
long  residence  of  Longfellow,  this  house  of  his  has 
another  and  even  greater  fame ;  for  it  was  the  head- 
quarters of  General  Washington  during  most  of  the 
time  that  he  was  conducting  his  operations  against 
Boston.  The  fine  old  house,  loved  and  lived  in  by 
men  of  such  diverse  greatness,  stands  as  if  with  a 
sort  of  sedate  pride  in  such  associations. 

For  some  years  between  the  time  of  its  occupation 
by  Washington  and  that  by  Longfellow  it  was  the 
home  of  a  certain  cunning  Andrew  Craigie  who,  it  is 
worth  remembering,  as  a  warning  not  to  apply  the 
word  "patriot' '  to  everybody  connected  with  early 
times,  was  an  apothecary-general  in  the  hospital  serv- 
ice in  the  Eevolution  and  was  believed  to  have  made  a 
fortune  through  using  his  special  opportunities  to 
buy  medicines  cheap  and  sell  them  to  the  army 
dear.  " Graft,' '  and  unscrupulous  holders  of  office, 
are  evidently  not  products  of  modern  days  exclu- 
sively. 

Next  door  to  the  stately  Longfellow  house  is  one 
that  is  even  finer  and  more  stately;  indeed,  the  en- 
tire neighborhood  hereabouts  is  full  of  charming 
homes,  mostly  Colonial,  or  admirable  copies  of  the 
Colonial  style.  Cambridge  displays  a  great  area  of 
beautiful  living,  with  beautiful  houses,  sloping  lawns, 
and  green  trees,  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  notice  that 
these  trees  are  largely  horse-chestnuts,  after  knowing 
what  ravages  are  taking  place  among  the  elms. 

227 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

A  few  minutes'  walk  from  the  Longfellow  house 
takes  one  to  the  site  of  one  of  the  most  thrilling  events 
in  the  world,  at  least  one  of  the  most  thrilling  to  any 
American,  the  spot  on  Cambridge  Common  where 
George  Washington  first  took  command  of  the  Ameri- 
can army.  Here,  soldiers  and  officers  stood  in  array 
before  him,  as  he  sat  upon  his  horse  under  an  elm  that 
even  then  was  old,  and  in  a  few  simple  words  de- 
clared that  he  assumed  command.  And  that  old  elm 
is  still  standing !  It  is  only  a  wreck,  now,  this  ancient 
tree,  only  a  fragment,  a  remnant,  and  trolley  wires 
crisscross  it  and  trolleys  rumble  close  beside,  but  it  is 
still  there,  still  alive,  a  monument  to  that  event  of 
significance.  It  stands  in  the  center  of  a  tiny  bit  of 
green,  at  a  street  intersection  at  the  edge  of  the  Com- 
mon, and  a  tablet  commemorates  the  event  with  a  sim- 
ple dignity  which  befits  the  event  itself. 

Under  this  Tree 

Washington 

First  took  Command 

of  THE 

American  Army, 

July  3,  1775. 

On  the  Common  itself  stand  several  cannon,  big, 
black,  heavy,  long-barreled  things ;  not  only  old  can- 
non, but  very  distinguished  old  cannon,  for  at  least 
two  of  them  were  among  the  very  ones  that  General 
Knox  brought  down  so  marvelously  from  Ticonderoga 
when  Washington  needed  them  to  use  in  his  siege 
operations  against  Boston. 

The  ancient  Washington  elm,  and  these  cannon,  are 

228 


"COLLEGES  RED  AND  COMMON  GREEN" 

among  the  things  that  ought  to  be  seen  by  every 
American. 

Off  at  the  edge  of  the  Common,  close  to  where  the 
Harvard  buildings  begin,  is  an  open  space  where  the 
American  soldiers,  some  twelve  hundred  of  them,  lined 
up  for  their  march  to  Bunker  Hill,  on  the  night  before 
the  battle;  a  brave  and  solemn  thing  to  do,  for  all 
knew  that  they  were  not  only  about  to  risk  death  in 
battle,  but  that  they  were  to  take  the  even  more  seri- 
ous risk  of  death  as  traitors  should  they  fail.  The 
President  of  Harvard  stood  on  the  steps  of  a  gam- 
brel-roofed,  elm-shaded,  altogether  delightful  old 
house,  to  pray  for  the  soldiers  as  they  stood  solemnly 
before  him.  The  fine  old  house  has  disappeared; 
within  my  own  memory  it  has  been  torn  down,  appar- 
ently without  reason,  for  no  other  house  has  taken  its 
place;  but  although  the  beautiful  old  house  has  been 
demolished,  and  although  that  Harvard  president  be- 
came long  since  dust,  the  bravely  impressive  scene 
has  not  been  forgotten — and  ought  never  to  be  for- 
gotten. 

And  it  also  need  not  be  forgotten  that  this  was  the 
house  in  which,  some  quarter  of  a  century  after  the 
Revolution,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  born. 

Another  old  house,  now  known  as  the  Wadsworth 
house,  was  until  recent  years  the  home  of  the  Harvard 
presidents,  in  honored  sequence ;  in  fact,  it  was  built, 
in  1726,  for  the  very  purpose  of  being  the  home  of  the 
presidents.  Its  back  is  toward  the  university  grounds 
and  buildings,  but  it  faces  out  on  busy  Massachusetts 
Avenue,  and  its  porticoed  door  is  directly  on  the  side- 

229 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

walk.  The  narrow  portico  would  just  keep  the  rain 
off  a  president  as  he  stood  while  putting  the  key  in 
the  lock.  Two  plain  wooden  columns  support  a  pedi- 
ment with  severe  triglyphs,  and  there  are  such  plain, 
simple,  good  ornaments  as  to  make  it  a  delight  among 
porticoed  doorways.  The  door  itself  is  eight-paneled, 
with  a  high-set  knob  and  with  four  lights  of  glass 
above  to  light  the  entry.  And  it  is  the  door  through 
which  Ealph  Waldo  Emerson  used  to  pop  in  and  out ! 
For  he  was  "President's  messenger"  when  working 
his  way  through  Harvard. 

Harvard  University  was  founded  almost  three  cen- 
turies ago ;  it  was  founded  as  far  back  as  1636 !  And 
what  those  early  Americans  determined  upon  was  ex- 
pressed in  words  that  are  perpetuated  in  an  inscrip- 
tion at  the  principal  gateway  to  the  Harvard  grounds : 

"  After  God  had  carried  vs  safe  to  New  England,  and  wee 
had  bvilded  ovr  hovses,  provided  necessaries  for  ovr  liveli- 
hood, reard  convenient  places  for  Gods  worship,  and  setled 
the  civill  government,  one  of  the  next  things  we  longed  for 
and  looked  after  was  to  advance  learning  and  perpetvate 
it  to  posterity.' ' 

It  was  in  1636  that  the  General  Court  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  agreed  to  give  four  hundred  pounds  towards 
a  "schoale  or  colledge,"  half  to  be  paid  the  next  year 
and  half  when  the  building  should  be  finished,  and  it 
was  ordered  that  the  school  be  established  at  Newe- 
towne,  and  that  Newetowne  should  thenceforth  be 
called  Cambridge,  and  later  it  was  ordered  that  the 
college  " shall  bee  called  Harvard  Colledge":  which 
directions  were  duly  followed. 

230 


"COLLEGES  BED  AND  COMMON  GREEN" 

Harvard  dislikes  outside  criticism,  but  enjoys  hu- 
morous flings  if  it  flings  the  humor  itself;  as  when 
Harvard  men  some  years  ago  flung  paint  humorously 
upon  John  Harvard's  statue — only  to  find,  in  that 
case,  that  it  did  not  seem  so  very  humorous  after  all ! 
And  as  to  that  statue,  with  its  inscription,  "John 
Harvard,  Founder,  1638,' '  even  dignitaries  of  the  uni- 
versity are  prone  to  refer  to  it  as  the  "statue  of  the 
three  lies ' ' ;  for  John  Harvard  was  not  the  founder ; 
and  it  was  not  even  in  the  year  of  the  founding,  but 
two  years  afterwards,  that  he  made  the  bequest,  of  all 
his  library,  some  three  hundred  books,  and  half  of  his 
fortune  of  some  fifteen  hundred  pounds,  which  actu- 
ally acted  as  the  needed  impulse  to  carry  out  the  initial 
inspiration;  and,  finally,  the  figure  does  not  really 
represent  John  Harvard,  for  it  is  made  from  the 
sculptor  's  imagination  of  what  he  ought  to  look  like ! 
And  it  does  not,  it  may  be  added,  give  precisely  the 
impression  of  what  John  Harvard  really  was — a  cul- 
tured, earnest  minister,  of  only  thirty-one  years  of 
age.  And  few  men  dying  at  thirty-one  have  been  able 
to  link  their  names  with  a  movement  or  institution  so 
famous. 

Another  of  the  flings  from  within  Harvard  came 
from  the  beloved  Lampoon,  which,  referring  to  a  not- 
so-very-long-ago  president,  noticeably  cold  in  general 
mien,  suggested  that  a  monument  be  raised  to  him  on 
a  certain  spot,  with  an  inscription  declaring  that  there 
he  actually  spoke  to  a  freshman. 

The  fine  gateways  to  the  Harvard  grounds,  all  of 
them  memorials  or  gifts,  add  materially,  in  connection 

231 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

with  the  wall  which  surrounds  a  great  part  of  the 
grounds,  in  giving  an  effect  of  harmonizing  and  bind- 
ing together  college  buildings  which  are  really  a  con- 
glomeration of  architecture ;  wall  and  gateways  almost 
give  character  and  distinction  to  the  entire  group  of 
buildings ;  although  some  of  the  buildings,  considered 
individually,  cannot  be  deemed  either  distinguished 
or  attractive. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note  that,  although  many  a  modern 
college  or  university  is  not  content  without  the  am- 
bitious name  of  "campus,"  old  Harvard  is  quite  satis- 
fied in  honoring  its  great,  reposeful,  tree-shaded, 
grassy  rectangle,  surrounded  as  it  is  by  college  build- 
ings, with  the  name  of  "yard." 

The  most  interesting  and  at  the  same  time  the  oldest 
of  all  the  Harvard  buildings  is  Massachusetts  Hall,  an 
attractive  old  structure  of  time-dulled  brick,  standing 
just  inside  the  main  entrance.  It  was  built  two  cen- 
turies ago  and  is  an  admirable  example  of  its  fine 
period,  with  twin-chimneyed  gable  at  either  end,  with 
shingled  gambrel-roof,  with  its  long  row  of  dormers, 
its  long  wooden  balustrade,  its  small-paned  windows, 
and  the  lines  of  slightly  projecting  brick  which  mark 
the  floor-lines  and  give  special  distinctiveness. 

The  finest  of  all  the  buildings  is  the  great  modern 
structure,  built  in  memory  of  one  of  those  drowned  on 
the  Titanic,  known  as  the  Widener  Memorial  Library, 
a  magnificent  structure  that  represents  lavishness  of 
wealth  and  a  deep  sense  of  classical  beauty.  The 
splendid  front  looks  out  on  charming  greenery,  on 
grass  and  elms,  with  here  and  there  a  maple  or  pine  or 

232 


"COLLEGES  RED  AND  COMMON  GREEN" 

chestnut.  The  entrance  door  is  approached  by  a  broad 
flight  of  granite  steps,  and  at  the  top  of  the  steps  is 
a  long  colonnade  of  mighty  pillars  of  stone,  fronting 
the  fagade  in  splendid  dignity.  The  interior  of  the 
building  is  temple-like  in  beauty,  in  its  soft  glory  of 
smooth  but  unpolished  stone.  There  is  a  curious  and 
impressive  vista  when  one  enters ;  for  ahead,  at  a  sort 
of  vanishing  point  of  sight,  through  and  beyond  the 
superb  hall,  is  the  effectively  placed  portrait  of 
Widener  himself,  as  if  looking  pleasantly  at  each  man 
who  enters. 

The  other  day  I  saw  a  full-page  description  of  this 
building  in  one  of  the  Boston  dailies,  and  quite  a  part 
of  the  reading  matter — twenty-four  lines  of  it  and  a 
subhead,  to  be  precise — was  devoted  to  what  was 
termed  the  "most  curious  book"  in  the  library  that 
the  great  building  holds.  "It  is  curious,  not  because 
the  book  is  rare  or  splendid  or  has  the  most  remarka- 
ble associations  or  represents  the  highest  flights  of 
an  immortal  author."  You  see,  it  is  not  notable  for 
any  of  the  reasons  which  would  arrest  attention  in 
Chicago  or  San  Francisco  or  New  York  or  Paris  or 
London.  But  the  newspaper,  after  tantalizingly  go- 
ing on  about  non-existent  reasons,  at  length  works  up 
to  the  climax,  the  real  cause  of  the  book's  being  singled 
out  for  distinction.  It  seems  that  it  is  a  presentation 
copy,  with  a  personal  inscription  to  the  man  whose 
name  gives  name  to  the  library,  and  that  the  inscrip- 
tion spells  the  word  "guild"  without  the  "u"! — just 
"gild"!  That  is  absolutely  all.  A  great  Boston 
newspaper  accepts  the  contribution  of  some  one  of  its 

233 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

staff  who  is  so  little  conversant  with  English  as  not  to 
know  that  the  word  in  question  may  properly  and  with 
authority  be  spelled  "gild";  no  editor,  no  copyreader, 
checks  it  or  looks  it  up ;  and  the  splendid  library  and 
the  remarkably  beautiful  building  are  held  up  to  Bos- 
ton scorn  because  of  the  newspaper's  own  deficiency 
in  orthographic  knowledge;  and,  according  to  the 
newspaper,  as  the  supposed  error  is  noted,  "your  face 
wears  a  smile  of  amused  wonder."  I  tell  of  this,  be- 
cause it  is  so  typical  of  Boston's  absolute  certainty 
that  nothing  can  be  right  which  is  not  done  precisely 
as  a  Boston  man  would  do  it. 

It  is  a  natural  transition  from  the  most  beautiful  of 
the  buildings  of  Harvard  to  that  which  is  furthest 
from  beauty — the  great  Memorial  Hall,  which  was  put 
up  some  half  a  century  ago  as  if  to  be  a  notable  exam- 
ple of  that  bad  period  when  scarcely  anything  of 
beauty  was  built.  But  although  this  building  itself  is 
unbeautiful,  the  idea  that  caused  it  to  be  built  was 
nobly  beautiful;  for  it  was  erected  as  a  memorial  to 
the  men  of  Harvard  who  gave  their  lives  for  their 
country  in  the  Civil  War.  And  much  of  the  interior  is 
of  striking  effect.  Down  the  lofty  and  impressive 
main  corridor  there  are  tablets  to  one  after  another  of 
the  many  who  thus  died — a  thrilling  list.  One  sees 
such  old  New  England  names  as  Peabody,  Wadsworth, 
and  Bowditch ;  one  sees  the  name  of  Fletcher  Webster ; 
one  sees  that  an  Edward  Bevere  died  at  Antietam  and 
a  Paul  Bevere  at  Gettysburg. 

One  end  of  the  building  is  given  over  to  a  great  col- 
lege dining-hall,  imposing  and  lofty-roofed,  and  so 

234 


"COLLEGES  EED  AND  COMMON  GREEN" 

remindful  of  the  dining-hall  of  Christ  Church  at  Ox- 
ford as  clearly  to  show  that  it  must  have  been  inspired 
by  that  noble  hall,  although  it  is  without  the  wealth  of 
finished  beauty  that  the  Oxford  hall  presents.  Still, 
this  Harvard  hall  is  very  impressive ;  in  spite  of  the 
mistake  of  ill-placed  rows  of  hat-racks,  and  in  spite  of 
the  heaviness  of  the  crockery  on  the  long  rows  of  long 
tables,  and  in  spite  of  an  Ethiopian  and  his  water- 
pitcher  at  the  end  of  each  row. 

But  what  is  most  notable  here  are  the  portraits, 
which  extend  around  the  great  hall  in  lines  of  grave 
dignity;  most  of  the  paintings  are  by  the  best  of  the 
early  American  artists,  and  are  priceless  in  that  they 
bring  down  to  posterity  the  appearance  of  the  great 
men  of  the  past,  while  at  the  same  time  the  greater 
number  are  notable  achievements  of  art  as  well. 

Here  is  Thomas  Hancock,  worthy  uncle  of  the  patri- 
otic and  famous  John ;  a  painting  by  Copley,  made  in 
1766.  Hancock  is  standing  on  a  floor  of  tessellated 
marble,  and  is  gorgeous  in  showy  clothing,  and  coat 
of  bottle-green  velvet,  with  ruffles  at  his  wrists  and 
ornate  buckles  on  his  shoes.  And  here  is  a  fine  Wash- 
ington, by  Trumbull,  a  portrait  given  to  Harvard, 
while  Washington  was  still  alive,  by  that  Craigie 
whom  we  have  seen  making  money  out  of  army  medi- 
cines. And  here  is  a  John  Adams  by  Copley;  an 
Adams  quite  unknown  to  Boston — for  he  is  repre- 
sented in  full  court  dress ;  a  costume  that  in  the  early 
anti-English  days  he  would  scarcely  have  dared  to 
wear.  And  here,  too,  is  a  painting  understood  to  be  a 
Benjamin  Franklin,  sent  from  England  by  Franklin 

235 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

himself  as  a  gift  for  his  brother;  but  it  does  not  at  all 
meet  the  usual  ideas  of  Franklin's  appearance,  as  it 
shows  him  quite  a  youngish  man  with  curly  hair  and 
bishop-like  sleeves ;  it  is  with  some  difficulty  that  one 
realizes  that  Franklin  was  ever  a  youngish  man,  there 
being  but  two  general  impressions  of  him,  one  as  a 
boy  with  a  bun  and  the  other  as  an  aged  philosopher. 
Here,  too,  is  an  excellent  portrait  by  Chester  Harding 
of  that  many-titled  man,  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  Vis- 
count Gordon,  Ambassador  to  Vienna,  Prime  Minister, 
and  so  on ;  one  of  the  many  notable  paintings  that  this 
American  artist  from  the  backwoods  made  in  Eng- 
land. 

That  the  hall  is  rather  dark  adds  materially  to  the 
general  impressiveness,  but  does  not  make  it  a  better 
medium  for  the  display  of  old-time  paintings ;  and  be- 
sides, most  of  these  paintings  are  skied  on  the  lofty 
wall. 

The  social  life  of  the  university,  at  least  from  the 
standpoint  of  some  of  the  newer  members  of  the 
faculty,  possesses  a  certain  frigidness  not  incompati- 
ble with  Boston  and  Cambridge  social  life  in  general. 
"The  winter  climate  of  Boston  is  distinctly  arctic, 
and  society  life,  from  sympathy,  perhaps,  seems  to 
pass  through  a  long  period  of  cold  storage";  thus, 
toward  the  close  of  his  long  life,  wrote  the  late  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  who  knew  all  that  was  to  be  known  of 
the  best  of  Boston  and  Cambridge  society;  and  I 
thought  of  this  when  I  was  told,  recently,  of  a  call 
made  upon  the  wife  of  a  new  professor  by  the  wife  of 
a  professor  of  long  standing.    She  found  the  younger 

236 


"COLLEGES  BED  AND  COMMON  GBEEN" 

woman  in  tears.  "Oh,  I  am  so  glad  you  came!"  she 
sobbed.  "Now — now — somebody  knows  me!  I've 
been  so  lonely  and  I've  been  crying,  for  I  thought  that 
nobody  knew  me  and — if  I  should  die — there  'd  be  no- 
body in  Cambridge  to  come  to  my  funeral!" 

A  happier  story  of  social  life  was  related  to  me,  of 
an  absent-minded  professor  who,  at  a  dinner,  was 
offered  an  ice  served  on  a  doily  of  exquisite  work- 
manship, and  taking  it,  but  continuing  his  conversa- 
tion, he  absent-mindedly  twisted  the  doily  with  his 
fork,  round  and  round  in  the  ice — and  then  swallowed 
it ;  to  the  amazed  distress  of  his  hostess ! 

Even  from  early  days  Cambridge  has  always 
seemed  a  part  of  Boston,  and  it  is  now,  by  means  of 
rapid  subway  trains,  really  only  a  few  minutes  from 
Boston  Common,  and  therefore  seems  more  than  ever 
a  part  of  the  big  city.  But  the  Cambridge  people  like 
to  remain  under  a  government  of  their  own ;  only,  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  suggest,  altogether  charming 
though  that  part  of  Cambridge  is  where  stand  the 
homes  of  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  there  is,  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  town  and  in  its  approaches  from  Boston,  a 
little  too  much  of  shabbiness,  a  shabby  and  drab  aspect 
associated  with  the  old  reputation  of  Cambridge  for 
dust. 

And  yet,  there  is  so  much  of  charm  about  the  place, 
there  is  so  much  of  thrilling  interest  about  it,  in  ad- 
dition to  its  collegiate  associations,  that  one  wishes 
only  to  think  of  that  summary  of  the  place  made 
long  ago  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  Ameri- 
cans : 

237 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

"Nicest  place  that  ever  was  seen, 
Colleges  red  and  Common  green, 
Sidewalks  brownish  with  trees  between." 

And  the  university  itself  remains  a  pleasant  mem- 
ory, with  its  throngs  of  Harvard  men  in  the  making ; 
of  whom  I  think  it  was  a  Bostonian  who  said,  that  you 
can  always  tell  a  Harvard  man — but  you  can't  tell  him 
much! 


^% 


CHAPTER  XIX 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN   PURE   ROMANCE 


A.THANIEL  HAW- 
THORNE, master  of  the  im- 
aginatively romantic,  tried 
to  make  his  very  life  one  of 
actual  romance,  and  never 
more  so  than  when,  with  the 
fire  as  if  of  romantic  youth, 
although  he  was  then  well  on 
toward  forty,  he  flung  him- 
self and  his  little  fortune  into 
the  adventure  of  Brook  Farm. 

Throughout  his  life  he  was  eager  to  find  the  ro- 
mance of  actual  living.  His  ideal  days  at  the  Old 
Manse,  rambling  in  the  woods  and  floating  on  the  Con- 
cord or  Assabeth,  his  life  in  romantic  Italy,  his  love 
for  the  romantic  countryside  of  England,  his  return, 
toward  the  close  of  his  life,  to  the  romantic  surround- 
ings of  his  beloved  Concord — always  he  sought  for  the 
finest  possible  in  life :  he  aimed  for  rugged  independ- 
ence but  tried  to  achieve  independence  romantically. 
And  the  most  romantic  feature  of  his  life  was  his 
connection  with  Brook  Farm. 

He  did  not  start  that  remarkable  movement.  He 
had  nothing  to  do  with  its  inception.    But  in  its  possi- 

239 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

bilities  it  so  appealed  to  him  that  he  went  into  it  with 
enthusiastic  buoyancy.  Those  who  think  of  Haw- 
thorne only  as  a  cold  and  uncordial  recluse  miss  alto- 
gether the  Hawthorne  who  rowed  and  camped  and 
talked  with  Ellery  Channing ;  they  miss  altogether  the 
Hawthorne  who  threw  himself  with  unreserve  into  the 
experiment  of  Brook  Farm. 

George  Bipley,  a  man  of  high  ideals  who  had  found 
it  due  to  his  own  conscience  to  leave  the  ministry,  was 
the  founder.  He  dreamed  of  a  community  in  which 
mental  advancement  and  physical  well-being  would  go 
hand  in  hand;  he  dreamt  of  a  society  of  intelligent, 
cultured,  cultivated  people,  who  were  to  live  together, 
with  each  one  improving  himself  and  all  the  others, 
and  each  one  doing  his  share  of  the  mental  and  physi- 
cal toil  which  would  be  necessary  to  keep  up  the  ex- 
penses of  living.  Life  was  to  be  simplified  and  made 
glorious.  There  was  to  be  a  school,  and  there  were  to 
be  mechanical  industries,  and  fruit  and  vegetables  and 
milk  were  to  be  the  product  of  their  own  farm.  Each 
one,  man  or  woman,  was  to  do  his  share  of  work,  physi- 
cal and  mental,  and  all  were  to  participate  in  the  mu- 
tual intellectual  benefits  of'  association.  After  the 
founding,  by  a  little  group  of  friends,  no  one  was  to 
be  admitted  without  probation  and  a  vote,  and,  thus 
safeguarded  against  undesirables  and  impracticables, 
the  community  was  to  represent  the  mental  activity  of 
a  wide  variety  of  thinkers  in  conjunction  with  the  plain 
good  sense  of  chosen  farmers  and  mechanics.  Each 
thinker  was  at  the  same  time  to  be  a  worker,  and  each 
worker  a  thinker. 

240 


AN  ADVENTUEE  IN  PURE  EOMANCE 

The  venture  was  begun  in  the  spring  of  1841.  The 
shares  were  five  hundred  dollars  each,  and  twenty-four 
were  taken  by  the  first  group,  the  founders.  And 
Hawthorne  did  not  wait  coldly  to  see  if  it  were  to  be  a 
success.  He  was  eagerly  ready  to  devote  himself  to 
the  work  and  to  associate  with  other  chosen  souls. 
Nor  was  his  enthusiasm  merely  of  the  spirit;  he 
showed  it  practically,  with  a  pathetic  earnestness. 
He  had  saved — he,  the  master  of  American  fiction — he 
had  saved  one  thousand  dollars  from  his  salary  in  the 
Boston  Custom  House,  and  this  sum  he  paid  in  for  two 
of  the  Brook  Farm  shares.  There  could  be  no  deeper 
proof  of  his  sincerity. 

Hawthorne  was  even  made  chairman  of  the  finance 
committee — the  last  position  in  the  world,  one  would 
think,  for  so  unworldly  a  man ;  and  it  is  vastly  interest- 
ing to  know  that,  after  paying  $10,500  for  the  property 
the  committee  promptly  negotiated  a  mortgage  loan 
of  $11,000  for  the  purpose  of  expenses  and  new  build- 
ings.   A  mortgage  for  more  than  the  purchase  price ! 

The  Brook  Farmers  were  to  fleet  the  time  carelessly, 
as  they  did  in  the  golden  world,  but  they  were  also  to 
work.  Charles  A.  Dana,  then  a  young  man,  joined. 
George  William  Curtis  joined.  The  man  who  was 
to  achieve  fame  as  Father  Hecker,  founder  of  the  Paul- 
ists,  joined.  Ripley  was  the  guiding  spirit.  Emer- 
son looked  on  with  sympathy  and  encouragement,  even 
though  Brook  Farm  did  not  draw  him  from  his  be- 
loved Concord.  Margaret  Fuller  did  not  join,  but  she 
lent  to  the  community  the  frequent  gleam  of  her  per- 
sonality.   That  Hawthorne  daily  milked  a  cow  is  one 

241 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

of  the  joyful  memories  of  the  Farm,  and  that  he  play- 
fully christened  the  cow  Margaret  Fuller,  because 
of  its  intelligent  face  and  reflective  character,  is  an- 
other. 

But  Brook  Farm  was  not  a  practical  success.  The 
land  that  Eipley  had  picked  out  was  wretchedly  poor 
for  farming,  nor  were  the  mechanic  industries,  such  as 
sash-making,  at  all  prosperous.  But  for  a  while  the 
effort  went  on  nobly.  There  was  wholesome  life  and 
companionship.  Scholars  and  gentlemen  hoed  and 
plowed  and  milked;  well-bred  ladies  washed  clothes 
and  scrubbed  floors.  The  nights  were  filled  with  talk 
and  music  and  cheerfulness.  Some  new  buildings 
were  erected,  which  seem,  from  descriptions,  to  have 
been  more  astonishingly  ugly  than  could  fairly  have 
been  expected  of  romantic  philosophers,  and  perhaps 
it  is  well  that  they  burned  down,  as  they  did,  either 
while  the  Brook  Farmers  were  there  or  in  the  years 
after  their  departure. 

I  think  the  fact  that  there  were  more  men  than 
women  militated  against  success;  and  it  seems  sur- 
prising that  more  women  did  not  join ;  with  such  men 
as  Hawthorne  and  Dana  and  Eipley  and  Curtis  there, 
it  would  seem  that  women  would  joyously  have  en- 
tered into  the  enthusiasm  of  it  all.  In  this  twentieth 
century  they  doubtless  would,  but  in  the  1840  's  women 
were  still  cabined,  cribbed,  confined. 

It  is  interesting,  and  it  is  striking,  that  not  one  of 
the  Brook  Farmers  ever  admitted  that  Brook  Farm 
was  a  failure.  Of  course,  they  admitted  that  the  com- 
munity broke  up,  and  with  financial  loss,  but  all  of 

242 


c .  r.  c  C  , 

t  e  •  a 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN  TUBE  EOMANCE 

the  people  connected  with  it,  both  men  and  women,  al- 
ways believed  that  there  had,  for  all  of  them,  been 
more  of  profit  than  of  loss ;  each  was  sure  that  every- 
one was  benefited.  It  was  really  a  glorious  thing  to 
do,  a  glorious  effort  to  make. 

Hawthorne  himself,  when  at  length  he  saw  that  the 
movement  was  doomed  to  failure,  was  wise  enough  to 
leave.  He  seems  to  be  picturing  himself  when,  in  the 
novel  that  was  one  of  the  fruits  of  Brook  Farm,  the 
"Blithedale  Komance,"  he  represents  Miles  Cover- 
dale,  on  the  eve  of  his  departure,  thus  setting  down 
his  thoughts  of  the  people  he  was  to  meet  out  in  the 
world,  away  from  his  companions  at  the  Farm:  "It 
was  now  time  for  me  to  go  and  hold  a  little  talk  with 
the  conservatives,  the  writers  of  the  North  American 
Review,  the  merchants,  the  politicians,  the  Cambridge 
men,  and  all  those  respectable  old  blockheads  who  still 
kept  a  death-grip  on  one  or  two  ideas  which  had  not 
come  into  vogue  since  yesterday  morning.' ' 

He  left,  and  married  the  woman  of  his  choice,  and 
continued  on  his  career  of  fame,  winning  more  and 
more  the  reputation  of  being  cold  and  repellent— i. 
which  his  associates  at  Brook  Farm  knew  so  well  that 
he  was  not !  And  he  wrote  his  novel  of  the  place — 
the  name  of  Blithedale  itself  declaring  what  charm 
and  poetry  he  had  found  there — and  he  incorporated 
in  that  story  the  feeling  of  what  Brook  Farm  had 
meant  to  him. 

Brook  Farm  itself  is  still  largely,  in  appearance, 
what  it  was  when  it  knew  the  wonderful  community. 
The  spot  is  but  ten  or  eleven  miles  from  Boston  Com- 

243 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

mon,  yet  urban  and  suburban  development  have  alike 
missed  it,  except  as  to  a  gathering  of  cemeteries  in  the 
region  close  by.  It  is  easily  reachable,  by  train  to 
West  Eoxbury,  or  even  more  conveniently  by  trolley. 
And  there  are  still  the  traces  of  the  main  entrance  and 
gateway ;  there  is  still  the  same  general  aspect,  of  walls 
trailed  over  with  the  scarlet  barberry,  of  rolling  mead- 
ows and  woodland,  of  dips  and  hollows  alternating 
with  little  heights,  of  pine  trees,  scattered  or  thickly 
massed. 

A  Lutheran  Home  stands  on  the  spot  where  the  main 
building  of  the  farmers  stood,  and,  such  having  been 
the  fiery  devastation,  the  only  house  standing  that 
stood  when  they  were  there  is  a  little  place  which 
somehow  gained  the  name  of  "Margaret  Fuller's  cot- 
tage" ;  for  the  reason,  as  it  was  long  ago  quaintly  said, 
that  it  was  the  only  building  there  with  which  Mar- 
garet Fuller  had  nothing  to  do !  But  it  was  a  building 
with  which,  undoubtedly,  Hawthorne  and  Dana  had  to 
do,  and  probably  all  of  them. 

It  stands  on  a  still  lonely  spot ;  a  small  house,  steep- 
roofed,  four-gabled,  of  broad  and  unplaned  clap- 
boards, and  with  windows  of  so  oddly  unusual  a  size 
as  to  lead  to  the  impression  that  the  sash  are  probably 
some  of  the  very  sash  that  the  Brook  Farmers  made 
and  unsuccessfully  tried  to  market. 

Pictorial  pudding-stones  of  enormous  size  dot  the 
landscape — one  marvels  that  with  such  outward  and 
visible  signs  of  an  unkindly  soil  Eipley  could  ever  have 
deceived  himself  and  the  others  into  faith  that  the 
land  had  possibilities ! — and  immediately  in  front  of 

244 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN  PUKE  EOMANCE 

this  cottage  is  such  a  stone,  over  six  feet  in  height  and 
of  twice  that  length.  All  about  stretches  away  a  land 
without  levels,  with  little  pools  in  the  hollows,  with 
trees  in  clumps  and  singles  and  masses,  with  rocky 
rolling  swells,  and  with  the  Charles  flowing  quietly  by. 
And  the  breeze  blowing  across  the  meadows  blows 
fresh  from  a  land  of  pure  romance. 

About  the  same  distance  from  the  center  of  Boston 
as  is  Brook  Farm,  but  off  to  the  eastward,  near  the 
coast,  are  two  small  homes  which  also  are  important 
in  New  England  history  and  which  also  stand  for  ro- 
mance, though  here  the  romance  is  of  a  different  char- 
acter, for  it  is  the  typically  American  romance  of  suc- 
cess, the  romance  of  rising  from  humble  surroundings 
to  lofty  place. 

It  is  in  Quincy  that  these  two  small  homes  stand, 
the  little  homes  in  which  were  born  two  men  of  Ameri- 
can romance.  And  I  do  not  mean  John  Hancock,  al- 
though he  was  born  in  Quincy,  for  he  was  not  of  finan- 
cially straitened  ancestry;  I  mean  those  two  Quincy- 
born  men,  John  Adams  and  his  son  John  Quincy 
Adams.  And  the  town  of  Quincy  is  the  only  place  that 
enjoys  the  honorable  distinction  of  being  the  birth- 
place of  two  Presidents  of  the  United  States. 

The  houses  in  which  these  two  Presidents  that  were 
to  be,  were  born,  are  of  rather  humble  type,  but  sweet 
and  cheerful  and  comfortable,  with  an  air,  as  it  were, 
of  self-respect.  The  two  stand  close  to  each  other,  al- 
most touching  shoulders.  One  looks  first  at  the  house 
in  which  John  Adams  was  born,  small  and  unimpres- 
sive as  it  is,  and  then  at  the  house  to  which  he  took  his 

245 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

wife,  a  home  just  as  simple,  where  their  son  John 
Quincy  was  horn.  It  is  amazing  and  it  is  inspiring  to 
realize  that  from  such  homes  men  could  rise  to  the 
highest  places  of  leadership  and  to  the  very  Presi- 
dency, and  the  close  conjunction  of  the  two  houses 
adds  much  to  the  dramatic  effect. 

John  Adams  fell  in  love  with  a  connection  of  the 
Quincys,  a  powerful  and  wealthy  family,  and  they 
from  the  first  discerned  his  unusual  qualities  and  did 
not  oppose  the  match,  and  the  marriage  was  of  great 
practical  aid  in  his  advancement.  And  his  wife,  Abi- 
gail Smith,  instead  of  being  one  who  was  always  urg- 
ing him  to  extravagance  or  pretentiousness,  as  a 
daughter  of  the  wealthy  Quincys  might  so  easily  have 
been,  was  a  woman  of  much  good  sense  and  of  modera- 
tion. It  is  delightful  to  find  her  writing  to  him,  when 
she  learns  that  he  is  likely  to  be  sent  as  ambassador 
abroad,  and  when  it  would  be  expected  that  she  would 
eagerly  urge  such  brilliant  advancement,  that  "this 
little  cottage  has  more  heart-felt  satisfaction  for  you 
than  the  most  brilliant  court  can  afford."  And  that 
this  Abigail  of  the  aristocrats  was  really  a  finely 
sturdy  American  was  further  shown  in  many  ways,  as 
by  her  answer  to  an  Englishman,  on  the  ship  on  which 
§he  herself  crossed  the  ocean ;  for  when  he  asked,  over 
and  over,  what  was  the  family  of  this  or  that  Ameri- 
can, she  told  him  "that  merit,  not  title,  gave  a  man 
preeminence  in  our  country;  that  I  did  not  doubt  it 
was  a  mortifying  circumstance  to  the  British  nobility 
to  find  themselves  so  often  defeated  by  mechanics  and 

246 


AN  ADVENTUEE  IN  PUKE  EOMANCE 

mere  husbandmen ;  but  that  we  esteemed  it  our  glory 
to  draw  such  characters  not  only  into  the  field  but  into 
the  senate." 

Adams,  from  such  a  humble  birthplace  and  such  a 
humble  home,  was  quite  equal  to  upholding  his  dignity 
and  that  of  his  country  abroad,  and  to  hold  with  honor 
the  office  of  President  of  the  United  States.  But  it  is 
rather  amusing,  and  it  is  highly  interesting,  looking  at 
these  plain  and  little  homes,  to  remember  that,  in  a 
letter  to  his  wife,  in  1797,  after  his  election  to  the 
Presidency,  he  wrote,  addressing  his  wife  as  "My 
dearest  friend,"  a  form  in  use  at  that  period  between 
married  folk,  and  signing  himself  "Tenderly  yours," 
a  form  even  yet  not  entirely  gone  out  of  fashion : 

"I  hope  you  will  not  communicate  to  anybody  the 
hints  I  give  you  about  our  prospects ;  but  they  appear 
every  day  worse  and  worse.  House  rent  at  twenty- 
seven  hundred  dollars  a  year,  fifteen  hundred  dollars 
for  a  carriage,  one  thousand  for  one  pair  of  horses,  all 
the  glasses,  ornaments,  kitchen  furniture,  the  best 
chairs,  settees,  plateaus,  &c,  all  to  purchase,  and  not 
a  farthing  probably  will  the  House  of  Eepresentatives 
allow,  though  the  Senate  have  voted  a  small  addition. 
All  the  linen  besides.  I  shall  not  pretend  to  keep  more 
than  one  pair  of  horses  for  a  carriage,  and  one  for  a 
saddle.  Secretaries,  servants,  wood,  charities  which 
are  demanded  as  a  right,  and  the  million  dittoes  pre- 
sent such  a  prospect  as  is  enough  to  disgust  any  one. 
Yet  not  one  word  must  we  say.  We  must  stand  our 
ground  as  long  as  we  can. ' ' 

247 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

John  Adams  was  very  much  of  a  man;  and  it  should 
be  remembered  that  it  was  he  who,  New  Englander 
though  he  was,  was  broad  enough  to  nominate,  in  the 
Continental  Congress,  George  Washington  to  be  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  American  forces.  Jefferson 
said  of  John  Adams  that  he  was  "our  Colossus  on  the 
floor ;  not  graceful,  not  elegant,  not  always  fluent,  but 
with  power  both  of  thought  and  of  expression. ' ' 

Adams  and  Jefferson,  it  will  be  remembered,  both 
lived  until  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  event  with 
which  both  had  so  much  to  do,  the  making  of  the  Dec- 
laration ;  and  both,  by  one  of  the  most  remarkable  co- 
incidences in  history,  died  not  only  in  1826,  the  fiftieth 
year,  but  actually  on  July  the  Fourth. 

The  two  Adamses,  the  two  Presidents,  father  and 
son,  were  not  only  born  in  adjoining  houses,  but  sleep 
their  last  sleep  in  adjoining  tombs;  for  both  lie  in 
granite  chambers  beneath  the  portico  of  the  Stone 
Temple,  that  fine-looking  church,  solid  and  of  excellent 
proportions,  with  round-topped  tower,  which  faces 
into  Quincy  Square. 

There  are  at  least  three  homes  of  the  Quincy  family 
in  Quincy,  but  it  is  one  in  particular  that  is  meant 
when  the  "Quincy  homestead"  is  referred  to  by  any 
one  of  the  neighborhood.  (The  Massachusetts  way 
of  pronouncing  "  Quincy' '  is  as  if  the  family  suffer 
from  a  well-known  affection  of  the  throat.) 

The  homestead  is  away  from  the  thick-settled  part 
of  the  city  of  Quincy,  and  is  set  nestlingly  beside  a 
stream,  now  little,  which  in  the  long  ago  was  navigable 

248 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN  PURE  ROMANCE 

for  smallish  boats.  It  is  a  great  dormer-windowed 
mansion,  quaint,  rambling  and  romantic,  with  attrac- 
tive roof  lines,  and  is  now  in  the  possession  of  a  patri- 
otic society,  and  filled  with  its  own  furniture  of  the 
past.  It  is  a  house  of  innumerable  spacious  and  low- 
ceilinged  rooms;  it  was  always  an  aristocrat's  house, 
and  presumably  it  was  deemed  none  the  less  aristo- 
cratic from  its  owner  being  a  bit  of  a  buccaneer.  It 
is  a  house  of  one  romantic  room  after  another ;  a  house 
unusually  full  of  charm,  even  compared  with  other 
ancient  houses;  a  house  dating  back,  as  to  its  main 
portion,  for  over  two  centuries ;  that  main  part  having 
incorporated  within  it  a  still  earlier  portion  dating 
back  into  the  sixteen  hundreds.  And  it  contains  what 
seems  surely  the  most  elaborate  and  most  cleverly 
constructed  secret  hiding  space,  between  floors,  in 
America,  this  space  being  an  entire  false  room,  en- 
tered by  a  secret  entrance,  and  of  quite  unsuspected 
existence  through  any  outward  appearance,  the  room 
above  it  and  the  room  below  being  reached  separately 
from  each  other  from  another  part  of  the  house. 

This  building,  so  extremely  interesting  in  appear- 
ance and  age,  possesses  a  definite  interest  in  that  it 
was  the  home  of  the  two  Dorothy  Q.'s,  those  delight- 
fully cognomened  young  women  who  float  with  that 
romantic  designation  through  New  England  history 
and  reminiscences.  And  the  adherents  of  either  one 
of  the  Dorothy  Q.  's  are  always  ready  to  do  battle  for 
her  as  being  of  more  prominence  than  the  other  Doro- 
thy Q.    Perhaps  none  but  New  Englanders  would  be 

249 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

interested  in  following  out  the  precise  genealogical 
lines,  but  at  least  one  may  say  that  the  Dorothy  Q. 
who  is  remembered  because  she  figures  pleasantly  in 
American  poetry,  was  born  here  in  1709,  and  that  the 
other  Dorothy  Q.  was  born  here  some  forty  years 
later  and  became  the  wife  of  John  Hancock. 

A  pleasant  tradition  still  keeps  in  mind  that  it  was 
in  a  room  with  a  beautiful  wallpaper  newly  imported 
from  Paris  that  Hancock  proposed  to  his  Dorothy  Q. 
and  was  accepted,  and  the  very  room  is  remembered 
and  the  very  wallpaper  is  still  on  the  walls ;  an  oddly 
striking  paper,  with  much  of  queer  red  in  its  composi- 
tion and  with  little  Cupids  and  Venuses  often  recur- 
ring. 

A  little  farther  along  the  coast,  to  the  southward 
from  Quincy,  is  Marshfield,  long  the  beloved  home  of 
Daniel  "Webster,  and  where  he  died.  To  some  extent 
the  mighty  Webster  has  already  been  forgotten;  his 
immense  and  overshadowing  fame  has  to  quite  a  de- 
gree vanished ;  and  this  is  largely  owing  to  his  having 
disappointed  all  New  England  by  his  ill-fated  "Icha- 
bod"  speech  on  the  subject  of  compromise  with  slav- 
ery. And  that  Whittier,  a  poet  far  from  first-rate, 
could  by  his  tremendous  "Ichabod"  lines  be  conqueror 
of  one  of  the  mighty  orators  of  all  history,  shows  curi- 
ously the  essential  strength  of  literature  as  compared 
with  oratory.  The  people  of  New  England  could  not 
forget  that  they  had  honored  and  trusted  Webster 
absolutely,  they  could  not  but  see  that  he  acted  against 
their  prof  oundest  principles ;  they  might  in  time  have 

250 


AN  ADVENTUEE  IN  PUEE  EOMANCE 

forgiven,  through  realizing  that  Wehster  discerned, 
what  they  could  not  discern,  how  dreadful  would  be  the 
impending  conflict,  and  that  it  was  because  of  this  that 
he  was  willing  to  temporize.  But  Whittier  wrote 
"Ichabod,"  and  the  proud  crest  of  Webster  sank. 

Webster  owned  two  thousand  acres  of  land,  border- 
ing on  the  sea.  Much  was  woodland ;  much  was  given 
over  to  fruit  trees ;  he  was  an  enthusiastic  farmer  and 
tree  grower.  Planted  under  his  personal  direction 
were  fully  a  hundred  thousand  trees,  and  he  had  a 
great  stock  of  pedigreed  cattle,  with  many  horses  and 
even  some  llamas ;  he  had  poultry  of  the  finest  breeds, 
and  even  peacocks.  He  saw  to  the  making  of  paths 
and  pools  and  walls.  He  lived  like  a  princely  farmer, 
spending  money  with  lavishness.  But  always  first  in 
his  affection  was  the  ocean,  with  its  might  and  mys- 
tery. 

His  house  was  burned,  some  years  after  his  death, 
and  all  the  barns  and  outbuildings  but  a  single  tiny 
little  one-story  structure,  really  but  a  hut,  which  he 
sometimes  used  as  an  office  or  study,  in  accordance 
with  the  practice  of  the  old-time  New  England  law- 
yers. Another  house  has  been  built,  but  there  is  a 
general  sense  of  something  lost  and  wanting. 

It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  Webster's  own  neigh- 
bors, his  immediate  friends,  in  Marshfield  and  Boston, 
were  loyal  to  him  at  the  last;  it  is  pleasant  to  know 
that  after  his  final  speech,  in  Boston,  in  1852,  the  year 
in  which  he  died,  a  huge  crowd  followed  him  to  his 
hotel  in  that  city  and  that  he  was  escorted  by  a  thou- 

251 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

sand  horsemen ;  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that,  going  down 
to  Marshfield,  thousands  and  thousands  met  him,  men 
and  women  and  children,  and  that  many  of  them  ac- 
companied him  throughout  the  ten  miles  from  the  sta- 
tion to  his  home — there  was  then  no  nearer  station — 
and  that  for  all  that  distance  the  way  was  lined  with 
his  admirers,  strewing  garlands. 

When  he  knew  he  was  dying,  he  loved  to  look  off 
toward  the  beloved  ocean,  and  at  night  he  loved  to  see 
the  light  that  swung  at  the  masthead  of  his  yacht; 
and  as  Death  crept  nearer,  he  one  day  had  himself 
placed  at  his  door,  while  his  cattle  and  horses  were 
led  by  in  a  long  procession. 

On  the  very  last  of  his  days  he  was  heard  to  mur- 
mur, "On  the  24th  of  October  all  that  is  mortal  of 
Daniel  Webster  will  be  no  more. ' f  He  was  buried  in 
his  favorite  costume,  with  blue  coat  with  gilt  buttons, 
with  white  cravat,  with  silk  stockings,  waistcoat, 
trousers,  patent-leather  shoes  and  gloves.  And  more 
than  eight  thousand  people  solemnly  followed  his  body 
to  the  grave. 

It  is  a  lonely  place,  a  spot  of  peculiar  desolateness, 
where  Webster  lies  buried.  It  is  a  long  distance  from 
any  house;  a  little  tablet  by  the  roadside,  near  the 
house  that  has  been  built  where  his  own  home  once 
stood,  points  the  traveler  down  a  pathway  that  winds 
far  off  to  a  distant  burying-ground,  upon  a  little  bit 
of  low-rising  land,  in  the  midst  of  a  great  salt-marsh 
meadow.  It  is  desolate,  it  is  lonely.  Once  an  ancient 
little  church  stood  beside  this  burying-ground,  but  it 

252 


AN  ADVENTUEE  IN  PUEE  EOMANCE 

long  ago  vanished,  leaving  no  sign  of  why  the  few 
graves  are  here,  although  among  them  are  some  of 
very  early  Pilgrim  stock.  But  the  lonely  graveyard 
is  not  neglected,  and  it  is  impressive  in  its  barrenness, 
its  desolation.  In  all,  it  is  even  beautiful  here,  with  a 
strange  and  somber  beauty. 

One  thinks  of  his  triumphant  oratory,  his  splendid- 
ness, of  the  power  he  possessed,  of  the  idolatry  he  in- 
spired. And  what  superb  poise  the  man  possessed, 
whether  one  trusts  to  humorous  stories  or  to  grave! 
He  could  thrill  immense  audiences  with  a  word,  a 
gesture,  even  with  his  moments  of  stately  silence.  It 
might  have  been  of  the  Orator  instead  of  the  Bellman 
that  the  poet  wrote  when  he  said :  ' i  They  all  praised 
to  the  skies — such  a  carriage,  such  ease  and  such 
grace!  Such  solemnity,  too!  One  could  see  he  was 
wise  the  moment  one  looked  on  his  face!"  That  is 
just  it:  Webster  not  only  was  a  great  man,  but  he 
looked  the  part  as  much  as  any  man  ever  did. 

But  there  was  also  a  cheerfully  human  side  to  him ; 
with  his  friends,  he  was  a  delightful  dinner  companion 
and  story-teller,  cheerful  and  gay ;  yet  even  at  dinner 
he  did  not  forget  his  stately  poise ;  I  suppose  he  could 
not  put  it  away  even  if  he  would ;  and  one  remembers 
the  perhaps  apocryphal  tale  of  his  carving,  at  dinner, 
and  unfortunately  letting  the  bird  slip  into  his  neigh- 
bor's lap,  and  of  the  booming  intonation  of  his  calm 
request, l  l  May  I  trouble  you  for  the  turkey,  madame  ? ' ' 
And  one  remembers  the  immensely  illustrative  tale, 
not  apocryphal,  of  Webster  at  the  Jenny  Lind  con- 

253 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

cert  in  Boston,  when  the  Swedish  singer,  aglow  with 
happiness,  came  out  and  bowed  to  the  great  audience 
in  response  to  tumultuous  acclaim  and  the  mighty 
Daniel  arose  in  his  place  in  the  audience  and  returned 
the  bow! 


if 


CHAPTER  XX 


A   TOWN   THAT  WASHINGTON   WANTED  TO   SEE 


|HE  ancient  Wayside  Inn,  at 
Sudbury,  dates  from  the  latter 
years  of  the  1600  's;  it  is  be- 
lieved that  at  least  a  good  part 
of  it  was  built  in  1688;  and 
it  was  a  well-known  stopping 
place  for  generations  before 
Longfellow  put  it  into  delight- 
ful verse.  It  stands  on  one  of  the  main  roads  leading 
from  the  west  to  Boston,  and  Washington  went  past 
here,  and  probably  halted  for  a  little,  and  Knox  and 
his  Ticonderoga  cannon  went  by  these  doors.  It  is 
distant  from  any  town;  it  has  always  been  notable 
among  inns  for  its  isolation;  and,  when  railroads 
came,  the  nearest  one,  as  if  respecting  decades  of 
seclusion,  remained  a  mile  or  more  away,  and  thus 
the  ancient  inn  is  as  isolated  as  ever  it  was,  and  has 
kept  on  adding  to  its  aspect  of  mellow  romance.  And 
it  is  really  so  very  romantic!  It  is  stately  fronted 
and  very  large ;  I  feel  sure  that  I  have  never  seen  an 
old  gambrel-roof ed  house  as  large  as  this ;  it  is  peace- 
ful, it  is  full  of  atmosphere,  and  its  ancient  rooms,  its 
taproom  and  sitting-rooms  and  huge  dining-room,  are 
furnished  with  things  of  antique  time. 

255 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

"  As  ancient  is  this  hostelry  as  any  in  the  land  may 
be ;  built  in  the  old  Colonial  day,  when  men  lived  in  a 
grander  way,  with  ampler  hospitality":  Longfellow 
wrote  of  it  with  glowing  appreciation,  in  those  "  Tales 
of  a  Wayside  Inn"  in  which  he  fancied  one  after  an- 
other of  a  group  of  friends  telling  stories  there.  But, 
although  the  plan  of  the  many  poems  was  fanciful,  the 
friends  to  whom  he  imaginatively  ascribed  them  were 
really  friends  of  his.  The  poet  was  Parsons,  the  mu- 
sician was  Ole  Bull,  the  Sicilian  was  Luigi  Monti,  the 
theologian,  Professor  Treadwell,  the  student,  Henry 
Wales,  the  merchant,  Israel  Edrehi — an  interesting 
group  of  friends,  for  a  Cambridge  poet! — and  the 
landlord  was  Howe,  one  of  a  line  of  Howes  who  for 
many  years  were  landlords  in  succession. 

Longfellow,  well  as  he  knew  the  surroundings  of 
Boston,  knew  nothing  of  the  famous  inn  until  told  of  it 
by  that  good  angel  of  the  Boston  authors,  James  T. 
Fields !  And  yet,  it  is  barely  thirty  miles  from  Bos- 
ton. The  old  inn  instantly  appealed  to  Longfellow's 
fancy,  and  without  ever  seeing  it  he  began  his  tales, 
giving  them  the  inn  setting.  Some  time  after  that,  on 
a  day  in  1862,  Fields  drove  Longfellow  out  to  the  inn; 
had  it  not  been  for  that,  Longfellow  would  have  been 
like  most  Bostonians,  of  his  own  day  and  of  the  pres- 
ent time,  in  never  seeing  the  fine  old  place  at  all.  It 
would  not  have  checked  Longfellow's  Wayside  poems, 
however,  not  to  have  seen  the  Wayside !  For  it  was 
an  idiosyncrasy  of  his,  frequently  indulged,  not  to  see 
places  about  which  he  wrote.  It  was  in  1839  that  he 
wrote  of  the  "Beef  of  Norman's  Woe,"  yet  as  long 

256 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

after  as  1878  lie  wrote  to  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  that 
he  had  * '  never  seen  those  fatal  rocks, ' '  though  they  are 
right  at  Boston's  door !  Longfellow  was  a  great  trav- 
eler, too ;  it  was  not  that  he  was  a  stay-at-home.  Yet 
I  have  seen  it  stated  that  he  never  saw  Acadia,  to 
which  so  many  thousands  pilgrimage  to  do  him  honor ! 
One  does  not  quite  like  to  inquire  whether  or  not  he 
ever  saw  the  definite  localities  of  Miles  Standish  and 
John  Alden. 

It  is  not  alone  the  houses  and  places  definitely  con- 
nected with  great  events  of  the  past,  or  with  great 
authors,  that  are  of  interest.  The  spirit  of  the  past  is 
often  finely  represented  by  old  houses  which  are  with- 
out great  associations,  but  are  fascinatingly  mellowed 
by  the  salt  and  savor  of  time.  The  ancient  Wayside 
Inn,  rich  in  its  associations  with  Longfellow's  admira- 
bly told  tales,  would  have  had  great  fascination  even 
without  them. 

New  England  still  possesses  a  number  of  very  old 
houses,  delightful  in  their  general  presentation  of  the 
past,  without  needing  much  of  definitely  great  asso-^ 
ciations.  There  is  the  Eoyall  house  at  Medford,  one 
of  the  oldest  houses  still  standing  in  this  old  country 
of  ours,  built,  the  greater  part  of  it,  in  the  early  1700 's, 
but  with  part  of  it  probably  dating  back  into  the 
previous  century.  Nothing  is  more  difficult,  in  most 
cases,  than  to  fix  upon  the  precise  building  date  of  an 
old  house,  and  the  difficulty  is  greater  if  the  house  has 
passed  through  the  hands  of  various  families,  and  in 
addition  has  been  altered  or  enlarged.  In  most  cases, 
when  a  house,  now  old,  was  built,  no  one  was  thinking 

257 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

of  far-distant  future  interest  in  the  precise  date  of 
construction.  Sometimes,  when  a  house  was  built,  the 
date  was  set  up  in  a  corner  of  the  gable ;  sometimes 
the  date  seen  in  a  gable  represents  the  date  of  an  addi- 
tion or  is  a  modern  guess  at  the  date  of  the  original 
building.  Most  often  there  was  no  marking  whatever, 
and  ancient  deeds  of  real-estate  seldom  throw  light  on 
the  subject,  because  they  mention  the  land  alone  or 
may  refer  to  an  earlier  house. 

The  Eoyall  house  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  in 
appearance  of  old  New  England  houses.  Although  it 
is  a  village  house,  not  a  house  on  an  isolated  estate,  it 
is  more  retired  and  exclusive  in  its  situation  than  was 
the  case  with  New  England  village  or  town  houses  in 
general,  which  were  mostly  set  near  a  main  street  or 
road.  A  great  open  space  is  still  retained  about  this 
Eoyall  house,  with  great  old  trees,  with  shrubs,  with 
part  of  an  ancient  lilac  hedge  with  white  and  pur- 
ple flowers,  with  the  marks  of  ancient  paths  and  drive- 
ways, with  even  the  ghost  of  a  garden  still  retained 
within  the  fragmentary  boundary  of  an  ancient  wall 
of  brick. 

Near  the  old  house  there  is  a  little  ancient  build- 
ing which  it  is  well  to  look  at,  for  it  represents  a 
feature  of  early  New  England  life;  for  this  little 
building,  believed  to  be  the  only  one  of  its  kind  still 
standing  in  Massachusetts,  was  the  quarters  of  the 
slaves ! — of  whom,  so  records  tell,  twenty-seven  were 
owned  by  the  master  of  this  Eoyall  house,  in  1732. 

The  Eoyall  house  is  a  house  with  two  fronts :  either 
back  or  front  may  almost  be  termed  the  front;  and 

258 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

it  is  a  big  house,  with  fine  doorways  and  windows. 
And  that  there  is  record  of  twenty-one  weddings 
known  to  have  been  solemnized  within  this  ancient 
home  is  quite  as  important  as  if  it  had  been  a  rendez- 
vous for  soldiers  or  had  sheltered  some  fleeing  patriot 
or  Eoyalist.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  owner,  when  the 
Revolution  came,  was  a  Eoyalist  who  fled  to  Halifax 
and  England;  he  yearned  deeply  to  return  to  the 
stately  house,  set  in  its  stately  environment  of  trees 
and  garden  and  grass,  but  he  died  an  exile,  before  the 
war  came  to  an  end. 

The  house  is  maintained  by  one  of  the  patriotic 
societies  and  is  furnished  throughout  with  the  furni- 
ture of  the  past:  and  in  a  corner  stands  a  chest,  of 
greenish  Chinese  lacquer,  an  odd-looking,  unex- 
pected thing  to  be  there:  and  you  learn  that  it  is 
reputed  to  be  one  of  the  very  chests  thrown  into 
the  harbor  at  the  Boston  Tea  Party,  and  picked  up, 
afterwards,  floating  in  the  water. 

There  is  a  staircase  of  delightfulness,  with  newel- 
post  and  balusters  exquisitely  fine ;  there  are  notably 
beautiful  interior  pilasters  in  the  upper  hall;  there 
are  paneling  and  window  seats  and  fireplaces  and 
cornicing  and  a  secret  stair:  there  is  abundance  of 
rambling  roominess  and  everywhere  are  the  belong- 
ings and  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  past.  For  such 
houses  are  in  themselves  the  very  past. 

It  is  near  the  Mystic:  a  quiet  stream,  sedate  and 
solemn,  slowly  winding  its  way  in  sweeping  bends 
through  marshy  levels  to  the  sea.  In  this  house  Gen- 
eral Stark  early  made  his  headquarters ;  and  his  wife, 

259 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

pleasantly  remembered  as  "Molly  Stark,"  watched 
from  the  roof  the  topmasts  of  the  British  ships,  in 
the  distance,  as  they  moved  out  of  the  harbor  at  the 
evacuation  of  Boston. 

Also  on  the  Mystic,  and  not  more  than  two  miles 
or  so  from  this  house  of  the  Eoyalls,  is  a  house  still 
older,  the  Cradock  house.  On  the  way  to  this  house 
one  passes  an  ancient-looking  little  shipyard,  whose 
little  ships  poke  their  bowsprits  out  over  the  very 
sidewalk. 

From  the  foreground  of  the  Cradock  house  and  of 
several  oldish  houses  that  neighbor  it,  the  salt 
marshes  of  the  Mystic  stretch  away  into  the  distance, 
and  far  off,  above  them,  rises  the  city  of  Boston,  on 
its  hill.  A  mist  was  gently  falling,  as  I  looked,  and  it 
dimmed  the  stream  and  the  marshes  with  mystery — 
all  was  becoming  literally  Mystic! — and  the  mist 
came  sweeping  softly  toward  the  ancient  Cradock 
house,  and  wrapped  it  as  in  the  mist  that  comes  with 
the  centuries. 

The  house  is  of  red  brick,  and  stands  on  a  low  knoll, 
and  is  admirable  in  shape,  with  its  gambrel-end  of 
felicitousness,  and  its  many-paned  windows,  and  the 
little  oval  windows  at  the  side.  Vines  clamber 
thickly  upon  it,  and  although  it  is  somewhat  spoiled 
by  inferior  immediate  surroundings,  it  is  itself  fine 
and  sweet,  it  is  itself  a  notable  survival,  standing  so 
happily  on  its  knoll  and  looking  off  toward  Boston. 

This  Cradock  house,  in  Medford — easily  reachable 
by  trolley — is  remindful  of  another  and  still  more 
fascinating  house,  of  about  the  same  date;  a  house 

260 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

which,  indeed,  looks  the  older  of  the  two,  and  prob- 
ably is:  the  Fairbanks  house  at  Dedham:  and  this 
also  may  be  readily  reached  by  trolley.  And  I  men- 
tion this  because  train  service  is  often  inconvenient, 
to  many  a  point,  and  because  not  every  tourist  goes 
about  with  a  motor  car. 

The  Fairbanks  house  is  of  three  periods,  all  of 
them,  so  it  is  believed,  in  the  1600 's !  The  middle  and 
oldest  portion  of  the  building  dates  back  to  before 
1650,  and  it  very  likely  deserves  the  honor  of  being 
the  oldest  house  in  New  England,  although,  as  has 
been  mentioned,  the  precise  dating  of  ancient  homes 
is  a  doubtful  matter. 

The  first  impression  is  of  an  entrancing  medley  of 
roof  lines :  literally  of  roofs ;  there  seems  to  be  noth- 
ing but  roofs! — for  the  roofs  of  the  center  and  the 
wings  come,  alike,  almost  to  the  very  ground.  The 
general  aspect  of  the  house  is  positively  fascinating : 
it  is  so  rambling,  so  long,  so  romantic,  so  fetching, 
as  it  stands  on  its  slight  rise  of  land,  shaded  and  shel- 
tered by  giant  hoary  trees.  There  is  no  other  house 
in  New  England  which  more  satisfactorily  represents 
very  early  America.  It  is  not  the  grandest  of  early 
houses,  but  it  is  thoroughly  homelike,  thoroughly  at- 
tractive, a  Puritan  homestead.  It  stands  at  the  junc- 
tion of  two  highways,  and  its  approach,  from  Boston, 
is  through  an  avenue  of  giant  willows  that  archingly 
intermingle  their  branches  above  the  road.  And  the 
house  is  forever  protected,  by  having  been  purchased 
by  the  Fairbanks  Family  of  the  United  States,  incor- 
porated for  the  purpose. 

261 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

The  ancient  town  of  Marblehead  possesses  the 
house,  the  Lee  mansion,  the  home  of  Colonel  Jere- 
miah Lee,  which  in  costliness  of  interior  finish  of  a 
home  stands  first  among  the  pre-Bevolutionary  man- 
sions of  New  England.  It  was  built  less  than  ten 
years  before  the  beginning  of  the  Eevolution,  and  is 
said  to  have  cost  the  sum,  at  that  time  deemed  enor- 
mous for  a  house,  of  ten  thousand  pounds.  That 
Washington  was  received  here  as  an  honored  guest, 
that  subsequently  Lafayette  was  received  here,  that 
at  a  still  later  date  Andrew  Jackson  was  a  guest,  are 
but  casual  claims  to  fame ;  the  chief  claim  is  the  house 
itself,  in  its  stately  beauty  and  dignity. 

But  in  the  first  place  one  notices  that  it  stands  near 
the  sidewalk,  with  distinctionless  houses  close  on 
either  hand,  and  that  ordinary  houses  face  it  from 
across  the  narrow  way.  Costly  as  was  this  mansion, 
the  home  of  a  merchant  who  owned  a  hundred  ships 
and  was  of  high  social  standing,  there  was  never  the 
slightest  attempt  at  aristocratic  exclusiveness,  or  to 
have  it  one  of  a  number  of  houses  in  joint  aristocratic 
environment,  as  with  the  superb  houses  of  Chestnut 
Street  in  nearby  Salem.  A  few  other  rich  houses 
are  in  the  neighborhood,  but  they,  like  the  Lee  man- 
sion, are  closely  surrounded  by  the  homes  of  the 
butcher,  the  baker,  the  candlestick  maker. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  wealthy  colonel, 
the  owner  of  this  house,  gave  his  life  for  his  country. 
He  was  searched  for  by  the  British,  at  the  very  be- 
ginning of  the  Revolutionary  struggle,  as  he  was  one 
of  an  active  committee  of  safety.    The  British,  on 

262 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

their  night  march  to  Lexington,  passed  near  a  house 
where  the  committeemen  were  gathered,  and  Lee, 
with  one  or  two  others,  lay  in  a  field,  in  hiding,  for 
some  hours,  and  he  shortly  afterwards  died  from  that 
exposure.  Well,  he  gave  his  life  for  his  country. 
But  what  an  opportunity  he  missed!  He  was  a 
colonel,  a  man  of  affairs,  a  leader ;  he  could  have  won 
immortal  renown  had  he  headed  the  farmers  against 
the  British,  instead  of  fleeing  and  getting  his  death 
from  the  chill  of  a  night  in  early  spring;  and  he  let 
the  farmers  win  immortality  without  any  leader 
of  prominence.  Like  John  Hancock  and  Samuel 
Adams,  Colonel  Lee,  after  getting  other  men  to  fight, 
fled  from  the  actual  conflict ;  even  though,  also  as  with 
Adams  and  Hancock,  on  that  night  before  Lexington 
and  Concord,  the  British  soldiers  were  so  close  upon 
him  that  it  was  with  difficulty  he  got  away.  Had  he 
accepted  the  opportunity  that  Fate  was  trying  to 
force  upon  him  he  might  not  only  have  won  splendid 
fame,  but  might  have  lived  after  the  war,  for  years, 
in  his  splendid  home. 

The  mansion,  now  maintained  by  the  Marblehead 
Historical  Society,  is  entered  through  a  superb  por- 
tico and  a  superb  ten-paneled  door.  The  hall  is  noble 
in  proportions  and  size,  being  forty-two  feet  long  and 
sixteen  feet  in  width.  The  stairway  is  of  the  noble 
width  of  six  feet  and  eleven  inches,  and  rises  in 
stately  ease,  with  beautifully  twirled  banisters  of 
mahogany.  The  stair  turns,  at  a  landing,  where 
there  is  a  wonderful  beehive  window  and  a  felicitous 
windowseat,  with  a  pair  of  beautiful  pilasters  at 

263 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

either  side.  I  do  not  remember  any  staircase  and 
landing  to  equal  the  beauty,  the  serenity,  the  nobility 
of  this,  in  any,  even  of  the  grandest,  of  other  Colonial 
houses,  South  or  North.  The  house  is  rich  in  panel- 
ing, and  one  of  the  finest  rooms  is  paneled  in  solid 
mahogany.  And  a  strikingly  distinguished  feature 
is  the  wallpaper  of  the  hall ;  huge  pictured  paper,  still 
in  perfect  preservation,  showing  great  classical  land- 
scapes, in  black  on  cream-colored  ground,  with  tem- 
ples and  arches  and  streams.  This  magnificent  paper 
antedates  the  Eevolution  and  is  supposed  to  have 
been  made  by  an  Italian  in  London. 

Within  sight  of  the  Lee  mansion  is  that  of  Lee's 
brother-in-law,  "King"  Hooper,  as  he  was  called 
from  his  wealth  and  magnificence;  he  was  another 
merchant  prince,  and  the  house  is  especially  notable 
from  the  fine  banquet  hall,  still  preserved,  in  the 
upper  story  of  the  big  building.  And  not  far  away 
is  another  Lee  mansion,  the  home  of  a  brother  of  Col- 
onel Lee. 

Marblehead  is  a  town  of  old  houses,  although  most 
of  them  are  of  a  far  more  modest  kind  than  these 
great  mansions.  And  it  is  an  interesting  town  in  its 
general  aspect  of  the  olden-time.  ' i  The  strange,  old- 
fashioned,  silent  town — the  wooden  houses,  quaint 
and  brown";  and  indeed  it  is  a  study  in  browns! 
And  in  its  older  portion,  beside  the  shore,  it  is  still 
little  more  than  a  maze  of  paths  and  byways,  of  nar- 
row streets  incredibly  twisting.  Houses  are  set  down 
at  all  sorts  of  angles,  shouldering  one  another  into 
or  away  from  the  roadways.    Many  of  these  houses 

264 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

are  ancient,  and  there  is  still  in  use  a  fascinating, 
ancient-looking  shipyard,  with  high-perched  ships 
under  construction,  directly  on  the  line  of  one  of  the 
streets,  as  with  the  one  at  Medford;  it  is  a  yard  full 
of  ships  and  chips.  And  there  are  black  rocks,  with 
black  pools  among  them,  and  a  rocky  shore ;  and  there 
is  a  broad  stretch  of  harbor,  thick-dotted  with  fishing 
boats.  The  people  who  live  in  this  most  old- 
fashioned  portion  of  the  town  are  still  full  of  old- 
fashioned  ways  and  beliefs,  and  many  of  them  have 
actually  heard  the  shrieking  woman:  the  ghost  of  a 
woman  who  was  put  to  death  by  Spanish  pirates  at 
what  is  now  called  Oakum  Bay,  and  who  shrilly 
shrieks  on  the  yearly  night  of  her  murder,  just  as  she 
shrieked  in  actuality,  dismally  rousing  the  town  from 
its  slumber,  so  long  ago. 

George  Washington  was  especially  desirous  of  see- 
ing Marblehead,  on  the  journey  that  he  made  to  Mas- 
sachusetts in  1789;  I  say  " especially,"  not  that  he 
gave  any  reason,  but  because  in  his  diary  he  singled 
the  place  out  for  mention  as  one  to  which  he  wished 
to  go ;  and  it  was  an  extremely  unusual  thing  for  him 
thus  to  write  of  any  place.  Going  to  Salem,  he  de- 
toured  to  Marblehead,  "  which  is  four  miles  out 
of  the  way,  but  I  wanted  to  see  it."  It  is  rather 
tantalizing  that,  after  so  writing,  he  kept  his  impres- 
sions of  the  place  to  himself ! 

Perhaps  he  went  to  Marblehead  because  it  was  the 
home  town  of  the  gallant  General  Glover,  who  did  so 
much  at  Long  Island  and  the  Delaware.  And  the 
home  of  Glover  is  still  preserved.    It  is  up  one  of  the 

265 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

crookedest  and  narrowest  of  the  lanes,  a  stone's  throw 
from  the  water's  edge,  in  the  heart  of  an  ancient  nau- 
tical neighborhood ;  it  is  a  white  house,  with  fine  door- 
way and  gambrel  roof,  and  has  a  fine  aspect  of 
dignity. 

Here  in  Marblehead  still  stands  the  house  in  which 
lived  Captain  Blackler,  one  of  General  Glover's  men, 
who  was  intrusted  by  Glover  with  the  command  of 
the  very  boat  in  which  Washington  crossed  the  Dela- 
ware !  And  compared  with  such  a  memory,  how  lit- 
tle does  it  matter  that  this  house  of  Blackler 's  was 
also  the  birthplace  of  Elbridge  Gerry ! 

Marblehead  is  mainly  known,  to  many  people,  from 
the  stirring  lines  depicting  Skipper  Ireson,  Whittier 
having  lived  in  the  town  for  a  time  and  having  be- 
come saturated  with  the  legends  and  spirit  of  the 
place.  But  Marblehead  does  not  relish  the  lines, 
picturing,  as  they  do,  the  supposed  cowardice  of  one 
of  its  captains,  and  has  striven  hard  to  throw  off  the 
odium  by  claiming  that  it  was  not  Skipper  Ireson 's 
wish  to  desert  the  ship  that  asked  for  aid,  but  that  he 
followed  the  united  demand  of  his  crew;  an  amusing 
defense  of  the  honor  of  the  town,  to  put  the  blame  on 
many  rather  than  on  one !  It  has  seemed  to  me  that 
the  endeavor  to  reject  the  story  has  really  been  more 
on  account  of  the  desire  to  throw  aside  the  odium 
of  Marblehead 's  women  engaging  in  the  pastime  of 
tarring  and  feathering,  a  sport  supposed  to  have  been 
left  to  men.  But  New  England  women  did  early  do 
tarring  and  feathering  on  occasion,  as  in  a  case  men- 
tioned by  Baroness  Riedesel,  in  her  memoirs,  as  hav- 

266 


A  TOWN  WASHINGTON  WANTED  TO  SEE 

ing  occurred  in  Boston,  a  case  in  which  a  party  of 
Boston  women  seized  the  wife  and  daughter  of  a  self- 
exiled  loyalist  and  tarred  and  feathered  them  and  led 
them  through  the  city.  I  am  afraid  that  a  good  many 
things  that  were  not  very  pretty  took  place  in  the 
good  old  days. 

So  far  as  bravery  is  concerned,  Marblehead  needs 
no  defender;  Ireson  was  an  exception— or  his  men 
were  exceptions,  if  the  town  prefers  to  put  it  that 
way.  Marblehead  is  said  to  have  given  more  men  to 
the  Eevolutionary  army,  in  proportion  to  the  popula- 
tion, than  any  other  town  in  America ;  and  it  was  not 
only  quantity  of  men  but  quality;  Marblehead  men 
were  famed  for  bravery.  It  was  to  a  Marblehead 
man,  in  his  armed  schooner,  that,  in  1775,  the  first 
British  flag  was  struck.  And  some  Marblehead  men 
sailed  into  the  St.  Lawrence,  also  before  1775  was  over, 
and  not  only  captured  English  boats,  but  actually 
landed  on  Prince  Edward's  Island  and  made  the 
governor  a  prisoner.  But  the  list  of  the  Marblehead 
brave  is  too  long  to  name. 

The  old  Town  House  of  Marblehead  still  stands, 
full  of  years  and  memories.  And  there  still  stands 
the  home  of  a  certain  Moses  Pickett  who,  reputed  a 
miser  and  dying  in  1853,  left  his  house  and  his  entire 
little  fortune  for  the  poor  widows  of  the  town,  thus 
with  his  thirteen  thousand  dollars  doing  far  more 
good  in  the  world  than  many  a  wealthy  man  has  done 
by  blindly  throwing  away  millions.  And  here  is  still 
standing  the  home  of  that  Captain  Creesy  who,  with 
the  Flying  Cloud,  won  the  reputation  of  being  the 

267 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

best  skipper,  with  the  fleetest  sailing  ship,  in  the 
world.  And  here  is  the  house  in  which  the  famous 
jurist,  Judge  Story,  was  born. 

A  church  is  still  standing,  St.  Michael's,  which  is 
over  two  hundred  years  old,  but  it  has  been  consider- 
ably altered  from  its  original  appearance.  And  there 
is  a  delightful  association  connected  with  it.  For  an 
early  rector  of  this  church  left  it  to  take,  instead,  a 
church  in  Virginia,  and  while  in  Virginia  he  was  called 
upon  to  marry  two  people  who  came  to  be  a  very 
prominent  couple  in  the  eyes  of  the  world — for  they 
were  George  Washington  and  the  Widow  Custis ! 


>  • 


'JV%4 


CMS*       & 

m  J- 


CHAPTER  XXI 


THE   FAMOUS   OLD  SEAPORT   OF  SALEM 


N  the  minds  of  many,  Salem  is 
chiefly  notahle  on  account  of  Haw- 
thorne ;  in  the  minds  of  others  the 
city  is  equally  notable  on  account 
of  the  witches;  yet  most  of  the 
Salem  people  themselves  do  not 
relish  any  talk  of  witches ;  in  their 
treatment  of  which  unfortunates, 
after  all,  this  city  only  followed 
the  example  set  by  Boston;  and 
as  to  Hawthorne,  he  for  his  part  frankly  disliked 
pretty  much  everything  connected  with  the  place  even 
though  he  was  born  in  Salem  and  achieved  his  greatest 
triumph  while  he  lived  there. 

The  ancient  house  where  Hawthorne  was  born  on 
the  patriotic  day  of  July  4th,  1804,  at  27  Union  Street, 
is  still  preserved,  and  it  is  a  house  that  could  never 
have  been  very  attractive,  and  is  situated  in  a  faded 
quarter  of  the  town  which  was  never  of  the  best. 

Salem  was  settled  at  about  the  same  time  as  Boston, 
but  a  little  earlier  than  the  big  neighbor  that  was  to 
outgrow  it;  it  was  settled  almost  ten  years  after  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth ;  and  among  the 
various  and  notable  things  in  the  long  history  of  Salem 

269 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

there  has  been  nothing  finer  than  its  standing  undaunt- 
edly by  Boston  when  Boston's  port  was  closed  in  pun- 
ishment for  unrest  and  outspokenness  shortly  before 
the  beginning  of  the  Bevolution;  Salem  might  have 
profited  by  a  rival's  misfortune,  but  would  not,  and 
nobly  set  forth,  in  formally  phrased  declaration,  that 
"We  must  be  dead  to  every  idea  of  justice,  lost  to  all 
feelings  of  humanity,  could  we  indulge  a  thought  to 
raise  our  fortunes  on  the  ruin  of  our  suffering  neigh- 
bors." 

Hawthorne  lived  in  Salem  in  several  different 
houses  in  turn,  and  in  one  of  these  houses,  the  house 
on  Herbert  Street  where  he  lived  as  a  boy  and  as  a 
young  man,  and  twice  at  different  periods  afterwards, 
he  wrote,  in  1840,  "If  ever  I  should  have  a  biographer 
he  ought  to  make  great  mention  of  this  chamber  in  my 
memoirs,  because  here  my  mind  and  character  were 
formed.  By  and  by,  the  world  found  me  out  in  my 
lonely  chamber";  and  it  was  of  this  Herbert  Street 
house  that  he  wrote,  "In  this  dismal  chamber  Fame 
was  won."  Future  fame,  in  the  person  of  another, 
had  certainly  found  him  out  as  far  back  as  when  he 
was  a  boy,  when  he  lived  in  this  Herbert  Street  house, 
for  at  one  time,  when  he  was  kept  from  school  through 
having  hurt  his  foot,  his  kindly  school-teacher  came 
here  to  call  upon  him,  this  quiet  school-teacher  being 
a  man  of  the  name  of  Worcester,  himself  to  be  famous 
as  the  author  of  a  dictionary  honored  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic! 

In  his  earlier  years  and  well  into  middle  life  Haw- 
thorne had  no  doubt  of  his  claims  to  high  literary  fame, 

270 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPORT  OF  SALEM 

but,  as  with  many  another  author,  doubts  came  to  him 
with  lack  of  financial  returns,  and  when,  at  the  age  of 
forty-five,  he  wrote  his  masterpiece,  he  was  so  afraid 
that  it  was  a  failure  that  he  actually  feared  to  show  it ; 
he  had  had  so  little  of  practical  success  that  he  could 
not  believe  that  he  had  really  written  a  book  that  was 
even  worth  looking  at;  he  was  utterly  downhearted; 
and  this  brought  about  the  most  interesting  happening 
in  the  entire  history  of  this  town  of  Salem,  the  dis- 
covery of  the  ' '  Scarlet  Letter. ' '  And  I  do  not  mean 
the  supposititious  discovery,  by  the  author,  of  the  let- 
ter itself,  but  the  actual  discovery  of  the  novel  by  the 
publisher. 

James  T.  Fields  came  out  here  to  Salem  to  see  Haw- 
thorne one  day  in  1849,  when  Hawthorne  was  living  at 
14  Mall  Street,  and  encouragingly  asked  for  material 
for  a  book,  to  which  Hawthorne  only  replied,  gloomily, 
that  he  had  been  doing  nothing.  ' '  And  who  would  pub- 
lish a  book  by  such  an  unpopular  author  as  I  am?"  he 
demanded.  Whereupon,  UI  would,"  promptly  re- 
sponded Fields.  His  publishing  instinct  told  him  that 
Hawthorne  had  really  been  at  work  and  had  something 
ready.  "You  have  a  book  already  completed,"  he  in- 
sisted, in  spite  of  the  author's  demurs;  and  at  length 
Hawthorne  reluctantly  admitted  that  he  had  really 
been  writing  something  and  that  it  was  enough  for  a 
book.  And  he  reluctantly  took  from  a  drawer  the 
manuscript  of  the  greatest  of  all  American  stories. 

Fields  took  it  with  joy,  hurried  with  it  back  to  Bos- 
ton, sat  up  that  night  to  read  it,  realized  its  greatness, 
and  hurried  back  next  day,  aglow  with  enthusiasm. 

271 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

He  found  Hawthorne  still  discouraged,  awaiting  his 
report  on  the  story,  but  the  discouragement  swiftly 
vanished  when  he  found  that  Fields  was  bubbling  over 
with  energy  and  happiness,  and  eager  to  make  a  con- 
tract for  the  book's  publication.  And  that  was  how 
the  "Scarlet  Letter"  saw  the  light. 

Previous  to  this  inspiration  and  encouragement  on 
the  part  of  Hawthorne's  publisher  there  had  been  the 
encouragement  and  inspiration  of  Hawthorne's  wife. 
For  when,  downhearted,  thinking  that  without  a  salary 
he  could  not  live,  he  had  gone  home  to  her  with  the 
news  that  he  had  lost  the  place  in  the  Salem  Custom 
House  that  had  come  to  him  from  the  friendship  of  his 
old-time  college-mate,  President  Pierce,  his  wife 
neither  joined  him  in  repining  nor  urged  him  to  seek 
some  other  salaried  place,  but,  instead,  put  down  be- 
fore him  money  that  she  had  been  saving,  unknown  to 
him,  from  the  domestic  allowance,  and  said  cheerfully, 
'  *  Now,  you  can  write  your  novel. ' '  It  was  under  that 
inspiration  that  he  wrote  it,  and  when,  the  work  done, 
fear  came  upon  him  that  it  was  not  good,  it  was  from 
his  publisher's  inspiration  that  it  saw  the  light.  In 
all,  a  strange  story  of  literature  and  of  Salem ! 

Near  the  waterside,  in  the  older  part  of  the  city, 
looking  out  at  a  lovely  view  across  the  water  of  the 
harbor  and  off  toward  the  broad  Atlantic,  is  an 
ancient,  nestled,  low-set  house,  with  ancient  stack- 
chimney  of  brick;  a  house  overhung  by  great  trees  and 
pleasantly  surrounded  with  grass,  and  reached  by  a 
little  private-looking  lane  known  as  Turner  Street, 
which  leads  down  from  a  main  thoroughfare.    Haw- 

272 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPORT  OF  SALEM 

thorne  wrote  of  this  house,  which  even  when  he  wrote 
was  about  a  century  and  three  quarters  old,  and  he 
gave  it  fame  as  the  "House  of  the  Seven  Gables." 

Within  my  own  memory  this  house  had  only  five  ga- 
bles, in  spite  of  its  fame-given  seven  and  its  actual 
present  seven,  for  it  has  not  only  been  restored  and 
kept  in  repair  on  account  of  its  association  with  Haw- 
thorne, but  an  architect  discovered,  or  thought  he  dis- 
covered, that  it  originally  had  seven  gables,  just  as 
Hawthorne  described  it,  and  so  the  necessary  two  were 
built  out  again !  And  a  wonderful  roof -line  the  house 
has,  with  its  clustered  gables  and  that  old  central 
chimney,  " stacked' '  like  those  of  Tudor  days.  Per- 
haps it  was  not  altogether  desirable  to  put  on  the  two 
gables;  Hawthorne  had  no  desire  to  have  the  house 
precisely  match  his  description ;  he  pictured  it  in  his 
imagination  and  that  was  quite  enough.  Hepzibah's 
1  *  cent  shop ' '  has  also  been  given  to  the  building,  and 
its  interesting  old  rooms  are  open  to  the  public  for  a 
small  fee. 

Hawthorne  began  to  write  the  "Scarlet  Letter"  at 
a  high  desk  in  the  Custom  House,  a  satisfactory,  good- 
looking,  old  square  building  down  near  the  waterfront, 
while  he  held  the  appointment  of  surveyor  for  the  port 
of  Salem,  and  it  was  after  he  lost  that  official  position 
that  he  finished  the  story. 

Hawthorne  felt  very  critical  toward  the  people  of 
Salem,  not  having  found  precisely  congenial  surround- 
ings there,  even  though  it  was  in  Salem  that  fame  came 
to  him,  with  some  of  his  early  work,  and  even  though 
his  wife  was  a  young  woman  of  Salem.    He  kept  very 

273 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

much  to  himself  while  he  lived  in  that  town,  at  least  in 
his  maturer  years,  and  his  attitude  is  expressed  by  a 
letter  in  which  he  comments  on  an  invitation  which  he 
has  just  received,  for  his  unsocial  expression  is, "  Why 
will  not  people  let  poor  persecuted  me  alone  !"  It 
need  not  be  thought  that  he  was  a  recluse,  but  at  no 
time  in  his  life  did  he  care  to  spend  time  with  people 
who  did  not  interest  him. 

Hawthorne  has  somehow  managed  to  offer  for  fu- 
ture generations  such  an  atmosphere  and  detail  of  the 
past  of  old  Salem,  and  thereby  of  all  of  old  New  Eng- 
land, as  shows  us  the  very  life  and  feeling  of  the  an- 
cient time.  He  could  see  and  feel  the  fine  old  romance 
of  the  past,  the  charm  of  it,  the  beauty  of  it,  and  he 
could  also  see  the  vivid  human  nature  of  it.  And 
Salem  could  never  quite  forgive  him  that  he  recog- 
nized also  the  impermanence  of  much  that  was  so  good 
in  it,  and  that  in  that  very  town  he  discerned  what  he 
termed 1 '  worm-eaten  aristocracy. ' '  It  was  his  ability 
to  see  and  to  feel  the  past  not  only  in  its  romantic 
colors  but  in  its  entirety  that  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  write  his  greatest  works,  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  and 
"The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables." 

One's  first  impression  of  Salem  is  that  it  is  rather 
an  uninteresting  place,  for  the  entire  central  district 
near  the  railway  station  has  been  made  unattrac- 
tively brick-red  and  modern;  but  by  getting  away 
from  this  central  region,  one  finds  that  there  is  still 
left  very  much  of  the  interesting. 

Gallows  Hill,  on  which  the  witches  were  hanged,  is 
a  hill  that  seems  to  be  a  solid  rock,  at  the  edge  of  the 

274 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPOKT  OF  SALEM 

town,  bare  of  trees  but  covered  with  grass  and  dwarf 
sumac.  The  actual  place  where  the  gallows  stood  has 
been  forgotten,  but  the  general  position  is  remembered 
and  avoided,  and  the  city  itself  owns  the  land.  Not 
far  away,  however,  quite  a  settlement  has  grown  up 
and  the  people  who  live  there  have  formed  themselves, 
with  cheerful  bravado,  into  a  Gallows  Hill  Association, 
and  when  the  children  of  Salem  not  long  ago  paraded 
in  a  pageant,  those  from  this  part  of  the  city  dressed 
themselves  proudly  as  little  witches. 

At  the  court  house  in  Salem,  some  ancient  witch- 
craft mementoes  are  preserved,  including  some  of  the 
" witch  pins' '  that  figured  in  the  evidence,  and  the 
curious  death  warrant  that  directed  the  sheriff  to  hang 
one  of  the  witches  until  "dead  and  buried' ' — which 
was  an  unintentional  order  to  carry  vengeance  beyond 
the  grave. 

Under  the  old  English  Common  Law,  which  was  in 
force  in  America  until  modified  by  local  laws,  convic- 
tion for  felony  involved  confiscation  of  property,  but 
there  was  no  provision  for  procuring  conviction  in 
case  the  accused  refused  to  plead.  Nowadays,  in  case 
of  such  refusal  the  court  enters  "Not  Guilty,' '  but  for- 
merly there  was  nothing  to  do  but  try  to  force  a  plea 
by  the  frightfully  painful  method  known  as  peine  forte 
et  dure,  which  was  the  heaping  of  stones  and  weights 
upon  a  man's  chest  until  he  yielded  or  died.  If  a  man 
was  brave  enough  to  bear  the  torture  to  the  bitter  end, 
he  could  not  be  convicted,  and  there  could  be  no  for- 
feiture, whereupon  his  heirs  inherited  his  property; 
and  now  and  then  a  man  actually  bore  the  pain  to  win 

275 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

that  result.  In  all  American  history  there  has  been 
but  one  example  of  peine  forte  et  dure.  Giles  Corey, 
accused  at  Salem  of  witchcraft,  and  knowing  that  if  he 
stood  trial  he  was  certain,  in  those  days  of  blind  ex- 
citement, to  be  convicted,  refused  to  plead  and  hero- 
ically bore  the  punishment  of  pressing  to  death. 

There  can  be  no  possible  appreciation  of  Salem  with- 
out going  from  end  to  end  of  Chestnut  Street.  Yet 
even  a  mention  of  this  street  is  likely  to  be  omitted  in 
Salem  guide-books,  merely  because  no  incident  ever 
happened  there.  But  no  greater  mistake  can  be  made 
by  any  one  who  wishes  to  understand  the  past  than  to 
look  only  at  places  connected  with  definite  occurrences, 
for  the  history  of  the  past  and  the  interest  of  the  past 
often  lie  even  more  deeply  in  houses  and  localities 
that  only  represent  the  past  with  indirectness.  And 
Chestnut  Street  is  in  itself  a  remarkable  American 
street. 

Among  the  most  interesting  streets  in  America  are 
Chestnut  Street  of  Salem,  Chestnut  Street  of  Boston, 
and  Chestnut  Street  of  Philadelphia,  and  each  of  these 
has  justly  been  deemed  a  street  with  much  of  the  old 
American  charm  of  architecture,  each  has  been  a 
stronghold  of  aristocratic  living,  each  has  still  much  of 
the  flavor  of  the  past,  each  is  a  street  of  houses  of 
beauty  and  good  taste,  and  all  these  three  Chestnut 
Streets  still  preserve  a  great  degree  of  their  original 
felicitousness,  even  though  the  greater  part  of  the 
Chestnut  Street  of  Philadelphia  has  lapsed  into  busi- 
ness. 

Salem  is  proud  in  the  belief  that  of  the  three  Chest- 

276 


ROMANTIC    CHESTNUT    STREET,    IN    SALEM 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPOET  OF  SALEM 

nut  Streets  its  own  has  always  been  the  best;  and  it 
really  has  been,  and  that  is  a  great  deal  to  say  of  even 
the  best  street  of  a  little  city  like  Salem.  These  Salem 
houses  on  Chestnut  Street  were  built  in  the  first  quar- 
ter of  the  1800  's  by  the  rich  merchants  of  that  period, 
and  there  is  not  only  a  superb  line  of  mansions,  well 
kept  up,  but  also  even  more  superb  lines  of  huge  trees, 
glorious  trees,  trees  that  splendidly  overarch  the  en- 
tire length  of  the  street,  the  houses  themselves  being 
just  far  enough  back  from  the  sidewalk  line  to  permit 
of  the  complete  rounding  of  the  shapes  of  the  trees. 
One  cannot  well  be  too  enthusiastic,  too  appreciative, 
of  this  street  of  mansions,  fine  American  in  style  as 
they  are,  and  designed,  most  of  them,  by  the  Salem 
architect,  Mclntire,  or  at  least  built  under  his  influ- 
ence. It  is  the  finest  street,  taken  in  all,  of  any  of  the 
streets  of  old-time  mansions  in  America,  and  the 
double  line  of  old  mansions  is  remarkably  unbroken. 

Toward  the  other  end  of  the  city,  with  staid  old 
homes  built  about  it,  is  Washington  Square,  with  its 
iron-railed  and  elm-bordered  training-green.  The 
houses  of  wealth  and  dignity  that  front  this  green  are 
of  the  same  general  period  as  those  of  Chestnut  Street, 
and  both  of  these  sections  show  the  fine  and  even  mag- 
nificent living  of  the  period  of  Salem's  highest  pros- 
perity, when  her  great  shipping  fortunes  were  made ; 
and,  indeed,  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  fortunes  of 
New  England  had  their  origin  in  the  glorious  days  of 
American  shipping. 

As  one  goes  about  Salem,  the  first  impression  that 
there  is  little  of  interest  here  entirely  disappears ;  one 

277 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

forgets  entirely  the  portions  that  at  first  jarred  ex- 
pectation ;  and  there  comes  the  full  understanding  that 
the  city  is  remarkably  rich  in  interesting  houses  of  the 
past.  And  it  is  one  of  the  chief  charms  of  the  place 
that  upon  these  houses  of  the  past  the  hand  of  the  re- 
storer has  been  but  lightly  laid,  and  that  they  remain 
as  their  builders  intended  them  to  remain. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  many  old  houses 
is  the  Pickering  house  on  Broad  Street,  a  particularly 
attractive  home  that  has  stood  there  for  two  and  a  half 
centuries ;  it  has  actually  stood,  right  here  in  Salem, 
since  the  later  years  of  the  time  of  Cromwell,  or  at 
least  since  1660,  the  year  of  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuarts !  How  unexpectedly  far  away  this  seems,  for 
America,  even  after  one  has  come  to  a  realization  that 
this  is  not  a  new  country !  For  it  is  hard  to  realize 
that  actual  living  was  so  fixed  and  comfortable  here  so 
long,  long  ago.  This  Pickering  house  is  still  pre- 
served and  cared  for  by  Pickering  descendants,  and 
the  building  serves  to  keep  in  mind  not  only  the  gen- 
eral charm  and  interest  of  the  charming  and  interest- 
ing past,  but  the  career  of  a  particular  Pickering  who 
was  born  in  this  house  and  who  won  unique  honors — 
that  Timothy  Pickering  who,  as  a  right  brave  fighter, 
was  an  officer  at  the  battles  of  Germantown  and  Bran- 
dywine,  who,  as  a  legislator,  was  successively  repre- 
sentative and  senator,  and  who,  in  Washington's  Cab- 
inet, was  given  the  successively  high  distinctions  of  be- 
ing postmaster-general,  secretary  of  war  and  secre- 
tary of  state. 

The  best  parts  of  Salem  are  interesting  not  only  be- 

278 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPOET  OF  SALEM 

cause  of  the  admirable  buildings  but  because  of  the 
not  infrequent  fine  and  planned  harmony  of  mansion 
and  carriage-house  and  garden,  arranged  and  de- 
signed as  a  complete  whole.  There  is  a  house  at  80 
Federal  Street  which,  with  its  surroundings,  is  a  par- 
ticularly good  example,  a  house  built  in  1782,  a  house 
which  ought  to  be  seen  by  any  visitor ;  it  is  of  fine  New 
England  architecture,  and  I  remember  its  doorway  as 
a  work  of  special  beauty;  and  it  has  carved  urns  of 
most  admirable  classic  design  on  its  gateposts,  show- 
ing how  very  beautiful  may  be  a  plain  gateway  with 
posts  and  ornaments  of  wood ;  and  this  house,  with  its 
garden  and  adjuncts,  is  one  of  the  excellent  examples 
of  harmonized  planning. 

More  than  most  other  Eastern  cities  Salem  offers 
direct  inspiration  for  visitors  from  the  West,  because 
from  the  first  it  has  been  built  with  detached  homes, 
each  with  grass  plot  and  garden,  instead  of  with 
houses  ranged  closely,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  as  in 
Boston,  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 

One  of  the  most  famous  of  naval  fights,  that  between 
the  Chesapeake  and  Shannon,  the  gallant  " Don't  give 
up  the  ship ! ' '  action,  was  fought  so  near  Salem,  just 
off  its  harbor,  that  the  heights  along  the  shore  were 
thronged  with  Salem  people  who  watched  the  progress 
of  the  battle  with  eager  suspense.  Always  a  brave 
city,  this ;  a  city  ready  to  encourage  others  in  bravery 
and  to  do  brave  things  itself.  It  is  said  that  in  the 
War  of  1812  forty  armored  vessels  of  the  two  hundred 
and  fifty  furnished  by  the  entire  country  were  from 
Salem.    And  the  mettle  of  Salem  was  shown  in  the 

279 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

brave  way  in  which  it  faced  the  devastation  of  the  fire 
of  1914,  that  swept  away  hundreds  of  houses ;  for  in- 
stead of  helplessly  yielding  to  what  might  well  have 
seemed  an  irreparable  disaster,  the  city  began  at  once, 
and  on  a  broad  scale,  the  task  of  rebuilding. 

A  fortunate  thing  with  that  fire  was  that  with  few 
exceptions  it  did  not  take  away  the  old-time  buildings 
of  the  city.  They  still  remain.  In  fact,  there  is  no 
better  place,  and  there  is  probably  no  place  even  as 
good  except  a  remote  town  like  Guilford  in  Connecti- 
cut, where  the  various  styles  and  periods  of  American 
buildings  may  be  seen.  Salem  still  has  houses  of  the 
1600 's,  with  their  overhanging  stories  and  stack  chim- 
neys; it  has  houses  of  the  1700 's,  with  their  gambrel 
roofs  or  roofs  of  double  pitch ;  it  has  the  great  square- 
fronted  stately  houses  of  the  period  from  1790  to  1825. 
Those  who  would  study  the  old  houses  of  America 
should  go  to  Salem. 

And  there  is  many  a  little  detail  here,  too,  that  is 
noticeable,  as  well  as  the  houses  themselves;  for  ex- 
ample, all  over  Salem  there  is  the  opportunity  to  see 
excellent  designs  in  old-time  door-knockers. 

The  Bopes  mansion,  a  house  of  the  1700  's,  is  inter- 
esting both  in  itself  and  in  the  way  in  which  it  has  been 
preserved,  for  it  is  an  endowed  memorial  of  the  past, 
left  by  its  late  owner  to  be  kept,  with  all  of  its  old  fur- 
niture and  with  its  garden  planned  as  an  old-fashioned 
garden  of  finest  type,  not  as  a  museum  held  by  one  of 
the  patriotic  societies,  but  as  a  possession  of  the  public 
into  which  the  public  may  freely  go.  The  house,  with 
its  belongings,  is  forever  to  be  shown  to  one  generation 

280 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPOET  OF  SALEM 

after  another,  with  no  chance  of  being  sold  or  torn 
down  at  the  whim  of  some  tasteless  heir. 

Yet,  if  all  these  old  houses,  with  their  wealth  of  old 
belongings,  should  be  destroyed,  the  Salem  of  the  past 
would  still  be  represented  if  it  should  still  retain  the 
treasures  of  its  Essex  Institute.  The  building  that 
holds  these  treasures  is  a  three-story  structure  of  gen- 
erous proportions,  standing  near  the  center  of  the  city, 
on  Essex  Street ;  and  that  where  this  house  now  stands 
there  once  stood  the  house  of  a  man  named  Downing, 
is  remindful  of  one  of  the  romantic  facts  in  regard  to 
early  America.  For  the  son  of  this  Downing  went 
over  from  here  to  London  and  became  so  strong  a 
friend  of  Cromwell  as  to  be  made  Minister  to  The 
Hague,  and  then  by  a  swift  transfer  of  allegiance,  in 
order  to  retain  his  ambassadorship,  he  swung  over  to 
the  cause  of  Charles  the  Second;  and  eventually  he 
gave  name  to  Downing  Street ;  that  street  of  all  streets 
that  is  most  typical  of  the  English,  the  street  whose 
name  typifies  the  English  government  itself! 

The  Essex  Institute  holds,  in  itself,  Old  Salem. 
Enter  the  door — and  the  building  is  freely  open  to  en- 
trance by  any  one  who  is  interested — and  instantly  you 
are  generations  away  from  the  present,  for  there  is 
nothing  that  does  not  tell  of  the  past,  and  the  past  is 
shown  with  infinite  picturesqueness  and  particularity. 
There  is  a  great  central  portion,  and  there  are  little 
alcoved  rooms  full-furnished  as  rooms  of  the  olden 
time,  all  in  immaculate  ship-shape  order.  There  are 
paintings  of  the  men  and  women  of  the  past ;  there  are 
the  very  costumes  that  they  wore,  the  gowns,  the  bon- 

281 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

nets,  the  coats,  the  waistcoats;  there  are  wedding 
gowns  and  there  are  uniforms  and  there  are  the  very- 
looking-glasses  in  which  those  old-timers  saw  the  re- 
flection of  their  faces.  Here  are  the  very  glasses  from 
which  they  drank  and  the  very  dishes  from  which  they 
ate ;  and  these  are  preserved  in  amazingly  great  quan- 
tity and  in  amazingly  good  condition;  and  glass  col- 
lectors would  like  to  know  that  one  item  alone  is  of 
some  one  hundred  and  fifty  cup-plates  of  glass  of 
Sandwich  make ! 

Here  in  Essex  Institute  is  the  furniture  of  our  fore- 
fathers, tables  and  sideboards  and  chairs,  and  among 
them  is  a  black,  heavy  three-slat  chair  with  high- 
turned  posts  which  was  the  favorite  chair  of  that  be- 
loved Mary  English,  who,  with  her  husband,  the  rich- 
est shipowner  of  Salem,  had  to  flee  from  Massachu- 
setts for  very  life  under  the  shadow  of  witchcraft  ac- 
cusation ;  and  this  excellent  old  chair  seems  to  stand  as 
a  reminder  that  neither  wealth  nor  high  character  nor 
charm  of  manner  nor  social  position  can  be  relied 
upon  to  check  a  popular  delusion. 

On  the  whole,  the  relics  are  remindful  of  a  cheerful 
past,  a  happy,  bright,  refreshing,  pleasant  past;  and 
the  surprising  number  of  spinets  that  have  been  pre- 
served would  alone  show  that  the  early  days  were  far 
from  being  days  of  mere  gloom  and  severity. 

But  not  only  the  personal  belongings  of  the  past, 
and  the  furnishings  of  the  old  buildings,  are  preserved, 
here  at  the  Essex  Institute,  and  not  only  is  there  a  de- 
lightful old  house  of  the  seventeenth  century,  with 
overhanging  second-story  and  peaked  roof-windows, 

282 


THE  FAMOUS  OLD  SEAPORT  OF  SALEM 

actually  within  the  grounds  of  the  Institute,  but  fas- 
cinatingly among  the  possessions  of  the  museum  are 
portions  of  old  houses  that  have  been  destroyed:  for 
here  are  pilasters  and  balusters,  pillars  and  window- 
tops,  here  are  the  very  cornices  of  rooms,  here  are  the 
essential  fragments  of  buildings  that  have  gone.  It 
would  seem  as  if  not  only  in  cases  of  demolition  of  old 
houses,  but  in  the  fewer  cases  of  restoration  and  "  im- 
provement/ '  the  Institute  has  been  on  the  watch  for 
treasure.  Some  time  ago  the  old  house  in  which  Haw- 
thorne was  born  had  some  of  its  window  sash  replaced 
by  larger  panes — and  the  little  window  through  which 
the  eyes  of  Hawthorne  first  looked  forth  to  the  sky  and 
the  great  world  is  preserved  at  the  Essex  Institute. 

A  few  miles  from  Salem,  out  beyond  Danvers,  is  the 
old  Putnam  homestead ;  a  sturdy  old  house,  gambrel- 
roofed,  and  built  around  a  great  central  chimney. 
Spacious  rooms,  great  fireplaces,  old  sideboard,  sofa 
and  chairs,  old-time  portraits  and  silhouettes,  all  tell 
of  the  long-past  time.  Here  many  a  Putnam  was  born, 
including  the  famous  General  Israel  Putnam,  "Old 
Put,"  who  so  bravely  galloped  down  the  stone  steps 
in  Connecticut  and  who  left  a  general  impression  of 
going  gallantly  galloping  through  the  entire  Revolu- 
tion. Putnams  still  live  in  the  old  house,  and  the  pres- 
ent small-boy  Putnam  has  the  big,  frank,  blue  eyes  of 
the  distinguished  Israel. 

There  is  an  inclosing  tall  thorn  hedge,  and  the  house 
is  shaded  by  great  elms  and  by  a  monster  willow  tree 
that  was  anciently  planted  by  a  Putnam  slave.  The 
house  is  away  from  the  center  of  Danvers,  in  a  charm- 

283 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 


ing  region  of  hills  and  dales  and  stone  walls  and  apple 
orchards ;  it  is  a  countryside  not  greatly  changed  since 
the  Eevolution — except  that  the  State  has  set  a  mon- 
strous ugly  asylum  on  a  hilltop  near  by;  a  poor  re- 
turn for  the  loyalty  of  the  Putnams. 

And  what  a  wonderful  family  these  New  England 
Putnams — who  changed  their  name  from  the  English 
form  of  Puttenham — were!  It  is  believed  that  they 
gave  more  men  to  the  Union  army,  in  the  Civil  War, 
than  did  any  other  single  family;  it  seems  even  more 
sure  that  they  gave  more  men  to  the  Kevolutionary 
army  than  did  any  other  family ;  and  on  the  great  day 
of  Lexington  and  Concord  there  were  more  Putnams 
than  men  of  any  other  name  who  eagerly  hurried  to 
take  part  in  the  conflict.  Seventy-five  Putnams,  all 
supposed  to  be  connections,  from  various  Putnam 
homes,  responded  to  the  call  that  day;  the  more  dis- 
tant could  not  come  up  till  the  British  were  back 
within  the  Boston  lines,  but  many  arrived  before  that 
— and  the  family  toll  for  that  very  first  day  was  one 
wounded  and  two  killed. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


THE  MOST  IMPORTANT   ROAD   IN   AMERICA 


[HE  road  between  Boston  and 
Concord  is  the  most  important 
in  America,  for  it  was  on  this 
road  that  America  was  made. 
The  halt  of  the  British  troops 
at  Lexington  long  enough  to 
fire  the  first  fatal  shots,  their 
advance  to  Concord,  the  brief 
contest  there  and  the  beginning  of  the  flight,  their  sec- 
ond arrival  at  Lexington,  where  they  cast  themselves 
down  with  their  tongues  hanging  out  like  those  of  dogs 
after  a  chase,  as  a  British  account  had  it,  then  the 
flight  on  to  Boston,  with  the  British  constantly  drop- 
ping under  the  fire  of  the  sharpshooters — that  day  and 
that  road  marked  not  only  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
but  foretold  its  close.  The  clear-sighted  Burgoyne 
wrote  of  the  fight  at  Lexington  that,  although  it  was 
but  a  skirmish,  in  its  consequences  it  was  as  decisive 
as  the  battle  of  Pharsalia. 

As  if  to  make  the  day  in  every  respect  typical,  the 
most  prominent  of  the  English  was  the  gallant  Percy, 
later  to  be  Duke  of  Northumberland  and  master  of 
countless  miles  of  countryside  and  of  Alnwick,  one  of 
the  greatest  castles  in  the  world.    But  the  English  sol- 

285 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

diers,  though  thus  led  by  one  of  the  proudest  of  the 
English  peerage,  fell  back  in  rout;  neither  English 
peerage  nor  English  soldiers  were  to  be  masters  in 
America. 

That  day,  the  19th  of  April,  1775,  was  curiously  the 
day  of  the  white  horse.  It  was  a  white  horse  that  the 
future  Duke  of  Northumberland  rode,  as  he  galloped 
here  and  there  along  the  frightened  line,  exposing 
himself  freely  to  the  fire  of  the  farmers.  And  most 
marked  among  the  Americans  was  a  gray-haired 
farmer  on  a  white  horse;  Wyman  of  Woburn — how 
Scott  would  have  loved  such  a  man  and  such  a  name ! 
And  during  the  miles  of  retreat,  and  to  the  very  edge 
of  Boston,  Wyman  of  Woburn  seemed  like  a  pursuing 
fate,  as  safe  from  English  shot,  on  his  white  horse,  as 
was  Percy  from  American  shot  on  his,  but  galloping 
across  fields  and  over  the  low  slopes,  setting  his  horse 
at  the  stone  walls,  time  and  again  firing  with  such  un- 
erring aim  that  an  appalling  cry  of  dread  of  him  went 
through  the  British  ranks. 

It  is  difficult,  at  this  day,  to  realize  what  bravery  was 
required  to  stand  up  against  the  British  troops.  It 
was  not  only  resistance  to  apparently  overwhelming 
authority,  not  only  resistance  to  the  British  govern- 
ment, but  resistance  to  the  King,  at  a  time  when  the 
brief  episode  of  Cromwellianism  had  been  long  de- 
plored and  forgotten,  and  when  to  oppose  the  King 
seemed  not  so  very  different  from  opposing  Heaven 
itself. 

Unrest  had  been  growing.  The  British  officers,  in 
Boston,  were  told  that  the  men  of  New  England  were 

286 


THE  MOST  IMPOETANT  EOAD  IN  AMEEICA 

about  to  rise  and  that  warlike  supplies  had  been  gath- 
ered at  Concord.  So  eight  hundred  soldiers  were  sent 
out,  under  Lieutenant-Colonel  Smith  and  Major  Pit- 
cairn,  to  destroy  the  supplies  there  and  to  capture,  if 
possible,  John  Hancock  and  Samuel  Adams,  who  were 
reported  to  be  in  hiding  at  Lexington. 

It  was  on  the  night  of  the  18th  that  Paul  Eevere  was 
sent  out  to  warn  the  countryside.  He  reached  little 
Lexington  in  the  darkness,  and  the  minutemen  of  the 
village  were  aroused  and  toward  daybreak  they  gath- 
ered on  the  triangular  village  green.  The  green  was 
then,  as  it  is  now,  a  place  of  quiet  beauty,  of  charm, 
edged  with  huge  elms  and  ash  trees  and  faced  by 
homes  of  dignity.  The  grass  grows  very,  very  green, 
as  is  curiously  usual  with  the  grass  on  battlefields. 

Lexington  is  still  a  village  of  such  charm  as  befits  a 
great  national  happening,  in  spite  of  the  coming  in, 
with  the  passage  of  years,  of  somewhat  of  the  unpic- 
turesque.  There  are  cedars  set  pictorially  on  the 
stony  slopes;  there  are  oaks  by  the  roadside;  there 
are  grounds  of  sweet  spaciousness  and  elms  in  lovely 
vistas.  And  the  village,  although  it  has  been  a  point 
of  pilgrimage  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  is  still 
entirely  without  tourist  characteristics.  A  beautiful 
white-pillared  meeting-house  looks  out  over  the  green, 
but  the  meeting-house  which  stood  at  the  very  point 
of  the  green,  in  1775,  has  vanished.  A  few  of  the  old 
houses  still  remain,  such  as  the  fine  square  Harring- 
ton homestead,  facing  the  green  with  its  prim  little 
low-setting  eaves.  An  old  monument  stands  on  a  lit- 
tle mound  on  the  green,  with  the  bodies  of  the  men 

287 


JHE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

slain  on  that  great  day  buried  around  it,  and  on  this 
monument  and  on  tablets  throughout  the  village  are 
descriptions  that  must  thrill  the  heart  of  every  Amer- 
ican, particularly  impressive  being  the  simple  mark- 
ing of  the  line  where  a  few  men  made  the  first  actual 
stand  against  England. 

It  was  a  lovely  April  morning;  from  two  o'clock  the 
minutemen  had  been  ready ;  and  as  the  early  dawn  was 
beginning  to  appear  they  gathered  once  more,  for 
news  had  come  that  the  British  were  actually  at  hand. 
It  was  now  about  half -past  four. 

In  all  some  fifty  or  sixty  Americans  formed,  in  two 
narrow  parallel  rows.  The  British  came  in  sight, 
their  arms  glinting  and  their  red  coats  glowing  in  the 
soft  spring  light.  Catching  sight  of  the  Americans, 
they  broke  into  double-quick,  but,  "  Stand  your 
ground;  don't  fire  unless  fired  upon;  but  if  they  want 
to  have  a  war  let  it  begin  right  here,"  said  Captain 
John  Parker;  and  the  bravely  solemn  words  are  en- 
graved for  all' time  upon  a  boulder  that  has  been 
placed  where  he  stood.  Major  Pitcairn  rode  forward 
and  sternly  ordered  the  minutemen  to  disperse ;  but 
they  stood  firm,  and  swiftly  there  came  a  volley  against 
them  and  a  number  fell.  Several  were  killed ;  others 
were  wounded.  There  were  a  few  scattering  shots  in 
reply.  The  Americans  dispersed.  And  the  British 
hastily  resumed  their  march  toward  Concord.  That 
was  all — all,  except  that  from  Lexington  came  freedom. 

Never  was  there  greater  capriciousness  of  happen- 
ing than  in  the  different  fates  of  two  Jonathan  Har- 
ringtons who  stood  with  the  line  at  Lexington :  for  one 

288 


JHE  MOST  IMPOETANT  ROAD  IN  AMERICA 

Jonathan  Harrington,  mortally  wounded,  dragged 
himself  to  the  door  of  his  own  house,  fronting  the 
green,  and  died  at  the  feet  of  his  young  wife,  whereas 
the  other  Jonathan  Harrington  lived  longest  of  any 
of  the  company,  not  dying  until  seventy-nine  years 
afterwards,  and  at  the  great  age  of  ninety-eight. 

The  road  from  Lexington  to  Concord,  along  which 
the  British  continued  and  back  over  which  they  were 
to  hurry  in  disastrous  retreat,  is  still  a  sweet  and  a 
charming  road,  a  road  of  wildness,  with  rarely  a  house 
to  be  seen  in  the  six  miles  of  its  length,  and  thereby  a 
road  that  gives  a  deep  impression  of  its  lovely  loneli- 
ness in  early  days. 

Bordered  for  a  short  distance  by  trees  that  arch 
over  the  entire  width  of  road — thus  it  begins.  It 
climbs  a  rolling  sweep,  lush  with  greenery,  and  then, 
passing  beyond  a  little  group  of  modern  houses,  be- 
comes a  narrow  lane  with  widely  sweeping  views.  It 
goes  twistingly  on,  bordered  by  ancient  stone  walls. 
Continuously  there  is  loneliness.  Purple  hills  billow 
into  the  distances.  The  road  goes  up  and  down  over 
little  sloping  rises ;  it  is  rarely  straight,  but  goes  con- 
stantly bending.  There  are  pine  trees,  there  are 
ponds  and  pools,  there  are  thick  masses  of  piney  wood- 
land, there  are  groves  of  little  white  birches,  there  are 
fall  asters  and  the  scarlet  sumac.  There  is  much  of 
rock  and  ruggedness,  and,  rounding  a  rocky  bluff, 
the  road  bends  with  the  bending  hill  away,  and  you 
come  to  one  of  the  spots  where  the  British,  retreating, 
tried  in  vain  to  rally ;  and  here  all  is  as  wild  as  on  that 
April  day  of  so  long  ago,  and  perhaps  even  wilder; 

289 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

there  were  likely  enough  a  few  more  houses  in  this 
region  then  than  there  are  now ;  indeed,  a  glow  of  red 
in  a  lonely  spot  on  the  farther  side  of  a  bleak  swamp 
turns  out  to  be  the  fruit  of  an  ancient  orchard,  where 
no  longer  is  there  either  house  or  barn.  Always  there 
is  a  foreground  of  forest  or  the  distant  sweep  of  tree- 
covered  hills ;  it  is  astonishing,  the  continued  loneliness 
of  effect,  and  this  but  a  few  miles  out  from  Boston. 

And  thus,  past  lines  of  birch  that  overhang  the  road, 
and  gracious  elms  that  dot  the  open  glades,  and  walls 
of  stone  that  fence  the  rocky  fields,  we  go  on  into  sweet 
and  charming  Concord — a  place  that,  once  known 
to  the  full  of  its  attractiveness,  remains  a  wistful 
memory. 

A  trolley  leads  from  Boston  to  Lexington,  following 
for  much  of  the  distance  the  route  taken  by  the  British, 
but  from  Lexington  to  Concord  it  follows  another 
road,  leaving  this  part  untouched  and  unspoiled. 

Concord  is  felicitously  named,  for  it  has  an  atmos- 
phere of  peace ;  but  it  was  far  from  being  a  place  of 
concord  with  the  British !  When  the  British  reached 
Concord  they  were  separated  into  several  parties, 
which  searched  houses  and  destroyed  gun-carriages 
and  powder,  and  at  the  old  Wright  Tavern,  still  stand- 
ing, Pitcairn  stirred  his  brandy  and  vaingloriously  de- 
clared that  thus  should  the  blood  of  the  patriots  be 
stirred.  And  it  was  stirred ! — but  not  precisely  as  he 
meant  it. 

A  party  of  perhaps  a  hundred  went  through  the  vil- 
lage to  the  bridge  over  the  Concord  Eiver,  following 
what  was  then  a  public  road,  though  afterwards  the 

290 


THE  MOST  IMPORTANT  ROAD  IN  AMERICA 

line  of  road  was  changed,  leaving  this  a  cut-off  at  the 
bridge,  and  it  is  now  a  quiet  spot  beside  the  water, 
among  the  trees,  away  from  traffic. 

The  Americans,  outnumbered  by  the  main  body  of 
the  British,  had  retreated  to  this  bridge,  and  with  the 
passing  of  the  hours  hundreds  and  hundreds  more 
came  hurrying  in. 

The  Continentals  stood  at  one  side  of  the  "rude 
bridge  that  arched  the  flood" — how  perfectly  Emerson 
phrased  the  entire  scene,  in  the  first  stanza  of  his 
Concord  lines !  The  bridge  that  literally  arched  the 
river  long  since  disappeared,  but  the  new  structure 
reproduces  it  in  shape  and  size ;  and  the  stream  that 
now  moves  on  with  such  full  gentleness  moved  on  with 
sweet,  full  gentleness  on  that  long-ago  April  day. 

The  Americans  were  under  the  command,  in  a  sort  of 
informal  way,  of  Captain  Buttrick ;  they  had  not  heard 
of  what  had  occurred  at  Lexington ;  they  felt  that  the 
solemn  responsibility  lay  upon  them  of  war  or  peace. 

The  British  came  to  the  other  side  of  the  bridge. 
Captain  Laurie  was  in  command.  And  what  thoughts 
the  name  of  a  Laurie  evokes !  For  the  home  of  Annie 
Laurie  actually  exists  in  Maxwellton  in  Scotland,  and 
what  is  deemed  her  portrait  is  there  shown,  and  por- 
traits of  several  military  Lauries  are  upon  the  walls. 
It  would  be  curious  indeed  if  this  Laurie  at  Concord 
was  a  kinsman  of  the  beloved  Annie. 

The  British  halted;  there  was  angry  parley;  then 
the  British  fired  and  two  Americans  fell  dead  and  sev- 
eral were  wounded ;  instantly  the  Americans  fired  and 
two  Englishmen  were  killed  and  nine  were  wounded. 

291 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

There  was  no  thought  of  retreat  on  the  part  of  the 
Americans.  Captain  Laurie  drew  off  his  force  and 
retreated  toward  the  main  body  of  the  British  at  the 
center  of  the  village,  The  Americans  cut  across  the 
hills  to  intercept  all  of  them  at  Merriam's  Corners. 
And  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  another  party  of  a  hun- 
dred or  so  of  British,  returning  over  this  very  bridge 
from  a  search  for  munitions,  a  little  after  the  conflict 
there,  saw  no  combatants,  alive,  of  either  side. 

The  British  knew  now  that  the  entire  countryside 
was  roused,  and  they  decided  upon  a  retreat.  They 
started  doggedly  back  to  Lexington,  fired  at  by  sharp- 
shooters hidden  behind  barns  and  houses  and  stone 
walls,  but  before  they  reached  Lexington  the  retreat 
became  a  frantic  rout  and  they  were  in  direst  straits. 

At  Lexington  there  was  a  brief  respite,  for  at  this 
point  they  were  met  by  a  reenf  orcement  of  a  thousand 
men  who  had  been  hurried  out  from  Boston,  under 
Earl  Percy,  at  the  first  news  of  real  trouble. 

Percy  did  all  that  bravery  and  ability  could  do.  He 
placed  field  cannon  so  as  to  sweep  the  road  and  ridge 
and  hold  the  Americans  briefly  in  check.  He  had  quite 
a  number  of  the  wounded  men  treated.  He  made  his 
headquarters  at  the  Monroe  Tavern,  a  square-fronted 
old  building,  still  existent,  on  the  main  road ;  and  the 
farthest  point  of  his  advance  has  in  recent  years  been 
marked  by  a  stone  cannon  set  at  the  roadside. 

Earl  Percy,  Duke  of  Northumberland  as  he  was  to 
become,  seems  to  stand  in  a  special  degree  for  the  re- 
gime of  the  aristocracy  that  the  Bevolution  overthrew. 
And  personally  he  won  the  reputation  of  being  a  most 

292 


THE  MOST  IMPOETANT  EOAD  IN  AMEEICA 

brave  and  likable  man.  I  remember  a  portrait  of 
him,  in  the  office  of  the  president  of  Harvard,  and  it 
shows  him  with  full  eyes,  arched  brows,  and  extremely 
long  Eoman  nose,  and  a  pleasant  expression,  dressed 
in  a  uniform  with  facings  and  epaulets  and  with  lace 
at  the  breast  and  at  the  cuffs.  He  was  idolized  by  his 
soldiers,  for  he  was  always  doing  some  thoughtful 
kindliness,  such  as  sending  home  to  England,  at  his 
own  expense,  the  widows  of  those  of  his  regiment  who 
were  killed  at  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill.  His  pic- 
turesque presence  seemed  to  mark  the  futility  of  the 
greatest  of  the  English  nobility  in  the  face  of  our  Eev- 
olution. 

The  retreat  of  Percy  and  Smith  and  Pitcairn  from 
Lexington  to  Boston  was  galling  and  disastrous. 
Tablets  along  the  roadside  tell  much  of  the  tale,  but 
they  do  not  tell  of  the  burning  of  houses  by  the  British 
soldiers  and  they  tell  little  of  their  killing  of  unarmed 
men;  the  British  were  maddened  by  the  incessant 
shooting  from  right  and  left,  and  got  quite  beyond  the 
control  of  their  harassed  officers.  A  party  of  sol- 
diers set  upon  an  old  farmer  of  over  eighty,  after  he 
had  slain  two  of  them,  and  they  clubbed  and  shot  and 
stabbed  him  into  unconsciousness.  Besides  general 
bruises  he  had  seventeen  bayonet  wounds !  But,  octo- 
genarian of  enviable  stamina  that  he  was,  he  recovered 
and  lived  to  nearly  the  century  point ! 

It  was  a  sultry  day,  a  day  of  early  and  intense  spring 
heat,  which  made  the  carrying  of  gun  and  accouter- 
ments  for  twenty  miles  of  deadly  retreat  after  twenty 
miles  of  night  advance,  a  heavy  task. 

293 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

It  was  almost  eight  o'clock  when  the  soldiers  came 
to  the  edge  of  Boston  and  found  safety  under  the  guns 
of  their  battleships  in  the  harbor.  Not  till  then  did 
the  pursuit  cease.  On  that  day  the  British  loss  was 
almost  three  hundred  men,  to  less  than  a  hundred  of 
the  Americans ;  the  British  lost  more  in  this  defeat  by 
farmers  than  they  had  lost  to  capture  Quebec! 

Here  at  Concord  the  scene  may  still  be  visualized. 
Here  is  the  famous  road,  leading  into  the  heart  of  the 
village,  with  the  low  ridge  bordering  it  at  one  side  and 
level  meadows  sweeping  off  at  the  other;  here  are 
bullet-marked  houses  standing  that  witnessed  the 
gathering  and  the  flight.  Here  is  a  beautiful  old 
church,  not  indeed  the  one  that  stood  here  in  1775,  but 
one  needfully  following  that  design  and  giving  com- 
pletion to  the  general  effect,  with  its  beauty  of  detail 
and  proportion.  And  at  the  bridge,  the  brimming 
river  calmly  flows,  and  close  beside  the  battlefield  still 
stands  the  sweet  Old  Manse,  weather-worn,  dun-col- 
ored, almost  gloomy,  shaded  by  great  pines  and 
fronted  by  an  avenue  of  ancient  ash  trees ;  and  at  the 
side  of  the  house  is  the  old  road  to  the  bridge,  lined  by 
a  mighty  double  line  of  gloomy  firs,  and  in  their  shade 
is  the  grave  of  the  first  two  of  the  British  to  be  killed, 
who,  as  the  inscription  has  it,  came  three  thousand 
miles  to  die. 

The  minister's  wife  watched  the  skirmish  from  the 
Old  Manse,  from  the  window  of  a  room  afterwards  to 
be  the  study,  in  turn,  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  For  this  ancient  Manse  has 
associations  even  better  known  than  those  that  connect 

294 


<■   r  c  r 
c  , 

5  «   •« 


THE  MOST  IMPOETANT  EOAD  IN  AMEEICA 

it  with  the  battle.  In  fact,  when  Concord  is  men- 
tioned, it  is  probable  that  more  people  think  of  its 
literary  associations  than  of  its  connection  with  our 
warlike  history.  And  probably  no  house  was  ever 
given  a  more  charming  description  than  was  given  by 
Hawthorne  to  this  romantic  Old  Manse,  to  which  he 
and  his  wife  came  to  make  the  first  home  of  their  mar- 
ried life.  But  both  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  moved, 
in  turn,  to  other  homes  in  the  village. 

The  house  which  was  the  home  of  Emerson  for  the 
best  part  of  his  lifetime,  a  square-front  building  of 
much  dignity,  is  but  a  few  minutes '  walk  from  the  cen- 
ter of  the  village,  on  the  road  along  which  the  British 
advanced  and  retreated.  Emerson  was  dearly  loved 
by  the  entire  village ;  he  seems  to  have  been  the  benefi- 
cent deity  of  the  place,  though  ever  far  from  being  a 
rich  man.  When,  returning  from  a  visit  to  Europe, 
he  found  that  the  townsfolk  had  repaired  his  house, 
which  had  been  injured  by  fire,  and  that  they  had  gath- 
ered to  give  him  a  loving  welcome  home,  he  was  too 
much  overcome  to  speak,  and  could  only  bow  his  head 
and  move  silently  toward  his  door,  only  to  force  him- 
self to  turn,  for  a  moment,  to  show  his  heartfelt  appre- 
ciation, and  to  say  that  he  was  sure  this  was  not  a  trib- 
ute to  him,  an  old  man,  returning  home,  but  to  the 
"common  blood  of  us  all,  one  family,  in  Concord." 
The  best  of  the  world  were  his  friends,  in  person  or 
by  correspondence,  but  he  none  the  less  loved  to  meet 
his  humble  neighbors,  and  to  take  his  part  in  town- 
meetings — and  he  even  joined  the  fire  company !  He 
had  come  to  Concord  after  forever  giving  up  the 

295 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

ministry;  he  had  driven  over,  in  a  chaise,  from  Ply- 
mouth, with  his  bride — the  drive  being  his  wedding 
journey — and  he  had  lovingly  made  his  home  in  the 
lovely  town. 

The  house  is  owned  by  descendants  of  Emerson,  and 
his  library  is  maintained  just  as  he  quitted  it ;  there  is 
the  same  reddish  carpet  with  its  great  roses,  there  are 
the  same  chairs,  the  same  Boston  rocker,  the  same 
table,  the  same  row  of  book-shelves,  ceiling-high  and 
crowded  with  mellow  books;  and  every  evening  his 
lamp  is  lighted  just  as  if  he  were  expected  to  come  in. 

Emerson  and  Hawthorne  liked  and  respected  each 
other,  but  there  was  little  personal  communion  be- 
tween them,  for  Hawthorne  was  everything  that  Emer- 
son was  not,  and  Emerson  was  everything  that  Haw- 
thorne was  not.  The  solemn  Hawthorne,  easily  bored, 
would  never  put  himself  out  to  interest  or  be  inter- 
ested by  those  whose  companionship  he  did  not  enjoy, 
and  he  kept  from  intercourse  with  the  townsfolk 
whom  Emerson  treated  in  such  neighborly  fashion. 
Naturally  Hawthorne  often  grew  as  tired  of  himself 
as  of  others.  Once,  when  his  wife  went  away  on  an 
absence  of  some  days,  he  determined,  so  he  wrote  in 
his  journal,  to  speak  not  a  word  to  any  human  being 
during  the  entire  time  of  her  absence;  only  to  find 
Thoreau  come  to  his  door,  whereupon  he  grudgingly 
admits  him,  and  reluctantly  confesses  to  his  journal 
that  to  hear  Thoreau  talk  is  like  hearing  the  wind 
among  the  boughs  of  a  forest  tree. 

Thoreau,  that  other  man  of  Concord,  must  have  been 
intensely  interesting;  that  both  Emerson  and  Haw- 

296 


THE  MOST  IMPOETANT  EOAD  IN  AMEEICA 

thorne  admired  him  would  alone  be  tribute  sufficient ; 
he  was  manly,  he  was  a  marvelous  observer  of  trees 
and  plants  and  animals;  he  would  sit  so  silently,  to 
watch  some  forest  animal,  that,  as  Emerson  records, 
the  animal  would  itself  go  toward  him,  in  fearless  curi- 
osity, to  watch  the  watcher ! 

It  was  here,  in  Concord,  that  the  peripatetic  Alcotts 
found  their  home ;  more  even  than  in  Boston.  They 
had  three  successive  homes  in  Concord,  and  that  which 
is  particularly  associated  with  their  life,  the  house  in 
w-hich  Louisa  M.  Alcott  wrote  her  " Little  Women," 
has  remained  practically  unchanged  since  their  time. 
It  stands  charmingly  at  the  foot  of  the  wooded  ridge, 
not  far  from  the  Emerson  house,  but  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  road.  Beside  it  is  the  little  building  once 
famous  as  the  School  of  Philosophy;  and  surely  there 
was  never  any  other  American  place  where  such  an 
undertaking  could  have  seriously  and  successfully 
been  carried  on !  Bronson  Alcott,  forgotten  as  he  is, 
was  the  kind  of  man  of  whom  Emerson  could  say,  in 
all  seriousness,  that  he  had  the  finest  mind  since  Plato ; 
and  before  taking  this  statement  with  a  critical  smile, 
perhaps  we  ought  to  reflect  that  few  ever  knew  as 
much  of  both  Plato  and  Alcott  as  did  Emerson ! 

The  home  of  the  later  years  of  Hawthorne — Ha- 
thorne,  the  novelist's  ancestors  spelled  it,  but  he 
changed  it  by  adding  the  "w" — is  next  to  the  "Little 
Women"  home  of  the  Alcotts — whose  name,  by  the 
way,  was  changed  by  the  philosopher  from  Alcox. 
The  house,  which  Hawthorne,  on  acquiring  it,  pleas- 
antly named  the  "Wayside,"  had  itself  been  one  of 

297 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

the  earlier  homes  of  the  Alcotts,  and  such  unphilosoph- 
ical  things  were  done  to  it  as  quite  destroyed  its  pre- 
Eevolutionary  aspect.  It  was  never  among  the  finest 
of  the  old-time  homes;  the  general  type,  hereabouts, 
largely  from  the  absence  of  dormer  windows,  was  not 
nearly  so  attractive  as  in  much  of  old  New  England. 
Hawthorne  made  further  alterations  to  please  his  own 
taste,  and  developed  the  place  into  a  pleasing  home, 
quiet  and  attractive.  It  is  hemmed  in  by  solemn  ever- 
greens, and  from  its  place  at  the  foot  of  the  ridge  looks 
out  across  the  sweeping  meadows. 

On  the  low  hills  behind  the  center  of  the  village  is 
Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  and  here  lie  buried  Louisa 
May  Alcott  and  her  father,  and  the  nature  lover 
Thoreau,  and  Ealph  Waldo  Emerson  and  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne ;  "  there  in  seclusion  and  remote  from  men, 
the  wizard  hand  lies  cold." 

At  the  very  center  of  the  village,  on  the  ridge-side, 
stands  a  more  ancient  graveyard,  where  lie  the  early 
pioneers;  and  among  the  ancient  headstones,  flaking 
and  blackening  with  time,  I  noticed  one  that  was  par- 
ticularly black  and  flaked :  with  difficulty  the  inscrip- 
tion was  deciphered,  and  it  is  to  the  effect  that  the 
stone  was  designed  by  its  durability  to  perpetuate  the 
memory,  and  by  its  color — its  color ! — to  l  '  signify  the 
moral  character,"  of  a  certain  Abigail  Dudley,  on 
whom  Time  has  played  so  ungallant  a  jest. 

One  of  the  very  oldest  houses  of  Concord  is  main- 
tained as  a  local  museum,  and  within  it  are  fascinat- 
ing relics  of  the  past :  old  china,  old  furniture — notably 
some  Jacobean  chairs  and  a  court  cupboard,  dear  to 

298 


THE  MOST  IMPOETANT  ROAD  IN  AMERICA 


any  collector's  heart — with  things  remindful  of  the 
writers  of  Concord ;  and  also  there  are  memorials  of 
the  great  day  at  Concord,  the  day  of  the  fight  at  the 
bridge — and  that  is  something  that,  with  its  lessons, 
should  never  be  overlooked  or  belittled  or  forgotten. 
As  one  of  the  wisest  of  American  humorists  long  ago 
paraphrasingly  said — and  every  really  great  humorist 
has  wisdom  as  the  basis  of  his  humor — "In  the  brite 
Lexington  of  youth  thar  aint  no  sich  word  as  f  ale. ' ' 

It  is  odd,  that  a  little  place  like  Concord  should  have 
won  such  a  mingled  reputation  for  loveliness,  fearless- 
ness and  literature.  I  remember  meeting  a  scholarly 
Englishman,  on  a  St.  Lawrence  steamer,  who  had 
landed  at  Quebec,  as  he  told  me,  in  order  to  see  Canada 
first,  but  who  would  soon  cross  the  boundary.  g '  Most 
of  all,"  he  said,  "I  wish  to  see  Concord,  for  it  is  classic 
ground. ' '    And  that  is  it.    Concord  is  classic  ground. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PROVINCETOWN 


LOSE  behind  Plymouth, 
close  beside  this  home  of 
the  Pilgrims,  close  to  this 
spot  where  three  hundred 
years  ago  began  the  cam- 
JJ-.  paign  against  the  wilder- 
f  ness,  there  is  still  an  im- 
mense tract  of  wild  and 
lonely  woodland,  there  are  miles  and  miles  of  wild- 
ness  almost  unbroken  except  by  roads ;  there  are  seem- 
ingly endless  stretches  of  oak  trees  intermingled  with 
lovely  pines  and  sentineled  by  cedars,  and  underneath 
is  a  tangle  of  huckleberries  and  sweet  fern  and 
bracken,  with  frequently  the  white  sand  gleaming 
through  the  darker  soil  that  has  tried  to  accumulate. 
In  the  very  heart  of  this  wilderness  one  may  come 
with  almost  startling  unexpectedness  upon  some  old 
house  aflame  with  trumpet-vine  or  white  with  flower- 
ing masses  of  paniculata,  but  the  few  homes  are  widely 
isolated.  The  region  is  even  now  wild  enough  for  one 
to  imagine  the  presence  of  the  prowling  bear  and  the 
prowling  Indian  of  early  days ;  and,  in  fact  and  with- 
out imagination,  the  deer  and  the  fox  are  frequently 

300 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PKOVINCETOWN 

to  be  met.  "Ye  whole  countrie,  full  of  woodes  & 
thickets,  presented  a  wilde  &  savage  heiw, ' '  as  Brad- 
ford himself,  leader  among  the  Pilgrims,  wrote. 
Much  of  Massachusetts  has  reverted  to  wilderness; 
immense  tracts  that  once  were  a  succession  of  farms 
have  gone  back  to  scrub  woodland ;  but  nowhere  is  it 
more  noticeable  than  here. 

The  ancient  town  of  Plymouth  still  has  much  of  an 
old-fashioned  aspect  in  spite  of  the  inroad  of  modern 
buildings ;  it  is  still  a  comely  American  town,  sitting 
decorously  beside  the  sea,  with  its  older  portion  close 
to  the  water-front,  where  a  few  old  houses  still  stand, 
in  shingle- sided  irregularity,  beneath  the  low-round- 
ing rise  where  the  first  burials  were  made  in  graves 
that  were  left  unmarked  from  fear  of  the  Indians 
creeping  in  and  counting  the  deaths ;  away  from  this 
there  sweeps  a  little  stretch  where  the  greater  part  of 
the  town  was  built  and  where  still  is  much  of  an  aspect 
of  staid  dignity ;  and  behind  all  this  is  the  watch-hill 
that  became  the  principal  graveyard  of  the  settlement. 

Little  fishing  boats  lie  at  their  moorings,  and  fisher- 
men in  yellow  oil-skins  lean,  gregariously  gossiping, 
against  the  buildings  beside  the  piers,  and  nets  are 
stretched  out  to  dry,  and  sea-gulls  go  curving  and  dip- 
ping and  flying,  and  across  the  water  are  barrier  spits 
of  sand,  greened  with  grass,  and  along  the  shore  are 
scattered  a  few  attractive  homes,  with  greenery  close 
about  them,  and  far  out  at  the  left  of  the  bay  and  far 
out  at  the  right,  are  jutting  promontories,  tree-clad. 

But  it  is  not  a  stern  and  rock-bound  coast;  it  is  a 
sandy  coast ;  and  it  is  seldom  that  the  breaking  waves 

301 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

dash  high  in  this  sheltered  nook;  and  yet  they  were 
inspired  lines  that  Felicia  Hemans  wrote,  for  they 
represented  the  bravery  and  the  loneliness  of  it  all, 
the  unbreakable,  undaunted  spirit  that  moved  those 
early  Pilgrims ;  and  the  lines  ought  never  to  be  for- 
gotten by  Americans : 

"Not  as  the  flying  come, 
In  silence  and  in  fear — 
They  shook  the  depths  of  the  desert's  gloom 
With  their  hymns  of  lofty  cheer." 

It  is  curious  that  this  British  woman  so  felt  and  ex- 
pressed the  spirit  of  the  band  of  exiles  who  moored 
their  bark  on  this  wild  New  England  shore ;  and  it  is 
curious  that  she,  who  could  so  perfectly  express  the 
feeling  of  early  America,  has  better  than  any  other 
poet  expressed  the  sense  of  the  beauty  and  finish  of 
England,  in  her  lines  beginning  *  *  The  stately  homes  of 
England,  how  beautiful  they  stand ! ' ' 

On  this  sandy  shore  it  must  have  been  difficult  for 
the  Pilgrims  to  find  a  boulder  big  enough  to  land  upon, 
but,  as  if  recognizing  that  posterity  would  really  need 
a  Plymouth  Eock,  they  managed  to  find  one,  and  here 
it  is,  carefully  preserved,  at  the  waterside,  after  hav- 
ing wandered  about  the  town,  from  one  stopping-place 
to  another,  in  the  course  of  the  centuries,  and  even 
having  suffered  in  its  travels  a  fracture  which  was 
carefully  repaired.  It  now  has  the  protection  of  a 
stone  canopy  and  a  gated  iron  fence,  but  the  gates 
are  usually  kept  open,  for  there  is  such  a  general  and 
profound  respect  for  this  stone  that  no  one  thinks  of 

302 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PEOVINCETOWN 

treating  it  carelessly,  and  I  have  seen  even  little  chil- 
dren who  have  run  under  the  canopy  in  a  sudden 
shower  rub  their  hands  gently  over  the  stone  as  if  in 
reverence.  It  has  not  been  chipped  or  spoiled,  as 
stone  monuments  open  to  the  opportunities  of  vandal- 
ism are  so  likely  to  be.  Bound  about  the  memorial 
is  a  little  grassy  spot  that  has  been  made  charming 
with  roses  and  barberries. 

The  low  rise  that  was  originally  the  burial-hill  is 
still  surprisingly  steep,  for  it  has  never  been  graded 
away;  a  little  back  from  it  stand  a  hotel  and  some 
homes,  but  at  the  very  edge  a  little  landslide  a  few 
years  ago  uncovered  some  of  the  bones  of  the  very 
earliest  settlers.  Away  from  this  low  rise  there  runs 
the  little  stream  beside  which  the  Pilgrim  leaders 
first  met  Massasoit,  and  the  garden  plots  that  lie  be- 
hind the  backs  of  the  houses  mark  the  original  "meer- 
steads ' '  or  homestead  limits  of  the  original  allotment. 

Old  records  have  been  kept,  and  among  them  is  one 
narrating  how,  seven  years  after  the  landing,  the  Pil- 
grims divided  by  lot,  with  meticulous  particularity, 
the  few  cattle  and  goats  into  thirteen  portions  each : 
"the  Greate  Black  cow  came  in  the  Ann"  as  it  is  set 
down;  "the  red  Cow  and  the  Heyfers,,,  so  it  is  writ- 
ten, with  freedom  of  spelling  and  capitalization, 
"came  in  the  Jacob";  and  there  are  various  details 
in  regard  to  "the  greate  white  backt  cow"  and  the 
other  stock. 

Plymouth  possesses  a  great  deal  of  attractiveness, 
and  indeed  real  beauty.  The  deep  blue  of  the  water, 
edged  by  the  promontoried  greenery  of  trees,  makes  a 

303 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

cliarming  frontage,  and  within  the  town  itself  there 
are  many  huge  trees,  some  of  them  carefully  marked 
with  records  of  their  planting;  there  are  great  elms, 
and  there  are  lindens  of  giant  size.  In  any  direction 
one  may  see  masses  of  dahlias,  or  the  flowering  honey- 
suckle, and  there  are  ancient  gardens  charmingly  in- 
closed within  the  greenery  of  ancient  box. 

There  are  houses  of  red  brick  and  there  are  houses 
of  white-painted  frame ;  there  are  houses  with  gambrel 
roofs  and  great  old  chimneys  and  pillared  porticoes. 
There  is  still  many  a  dignified  old  front,  broad  and 
generous  with  doorway  of  loveliness;  there  are  still 
some  of  the  old-time  fan- windows  over  the  entrance- 
ways;  there  are  reeded  pilasters;  there  is  still  much 
of  the  bulgy  old-time  window-glass. 

On  the  way  up  the  low  slope  from  the  water  is  an 
interesting  looking  old  gambrel-roofed  house  with 
wooden  front  and  brick  ends,  and  somehow  it  pleased 
me  to  hear  a  little  girl  who  was  sitting  on  the  steps 
called  " Barbara"  by  her  father,  for  the  name  seemed 
to  fit  the  old-time  house  as  did  also  the  ancient  looking 
pussy-cat  sitting  there  in  dignified  sedateness.  And 
a  tablet  upon  this  old  house  shows  that  it  stands  on 
the  spot  where  an  even  more  interesting  house  once 
stood  for  it  was  "  erected  by  the  Commonwealth  of 
Massachusetts  to  mark  the  site  of  the  first  house  built 
by  the  Pilgrims.  In  that  house  on  the  27th  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1621,  the  right  of  popular  suffrage  was  exer- 
cised and  Miles  Standish  was  chosen  captain  by  a 
majority  vote." 

Just  up  the  slope  and  but  a  short  distance  from  the 

304 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PKOVINCETOWN 

Kock,  stands  an  old  mansion  of  interest  as  a  survival 
of  early  architecture,  although  of  a  time  much  more 
recent  than  that  of  the  Pilgrims;  it  is  a  house  of 
unusually  noble  beauty  and  spaciousness  and  about 
it  is  a  garden  of  flowered  charm. 

The  modern  and  unattractive  that  have  come  into 
the  town  may  easily  be  disregarded  by  those  who 
desire  to  see  old  Plymouth.  Much  of  the  old,  much 
that  has  made  the  atmosphere  of  the  past  and  which 
rouses  memories  of  the  brave  old  times,  is  still  here. 

A  streak  of  meticulousness  must  have  become  im- 
planted by  the  early  itemizing  of  the  thirteen  shares 
of  cattle,  for  in  what  other  town  would  one  find  a 
notice  to  motorists  warning  them  of  a  dangerous 
corner  fifty-eight  feet  away !  And  as  to  other  public 
notices — well,  stop  to  gaze  at  some  interesting-looking 
tablet  and  you  will  probably  find  it  a  warning  that 
there  will  be  a  fine  of  twenty  dollars  if  you  spit  on 
the  sidewalk. 

The  First  Church  in  Plymouth — although  it  is 
really  the  fifth  first  church — is  tableted  as  a  "meeting 
house,' '  although  in  reality  it  is  a  solid  stone  building, 
early  Norman  in  design.  It  faces  the  little  town 
square,  where  three  veteran  elms  shade  the  yellow 
sand  that  covers  the  open  space.  Diagonally  across 
from  this  structure,  and  also  looking  out  upon  the 
little  square,  is  a  much  older  church,  a  highly  attrac- 
tive building  in  white  painted  wood,  with  white  pillars, 
and  attractive  pillared  tower.  This  church  is  called 
the  Church  of  the  Pilgrimage. 

Burial  Hill,  the  height  that  rises  from  these  two 

305 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

churches,  is  dotted  thick  with  gravestones,  and  among 
them  are  noted  the  boundary  spots  of  the  early  fortifi- 
cations. This  hill  was  beacon  hill  and  fort  hill  and 
burial  hill  in  one,  as  if  to  show  very  materially  that 
life  and  death  depended  upon  watchfulness  and  fight- 
ing. On  the  highest  part  is  a  stone  that  marks  the 
grave  of  doughty  old  Bradford,  the  several  times  gov- 
ernor. Looking  down  upon  the  town  from  this  hill- 
top one  sees  a  broad  massing  of  the  greenery  of  trees, 
with  here  and  there  the  white  or  red  of  the  houses 
peeping  through  and  with  three  lovely  belfries  rising 
in  variant  charm,  one  being  covered  with  copper, 
another  being  all  white,  and  the  third  showing  a  top 
of  gold. 

Standing  on  top  of  this  hill  the  memory  came  to  me 
of  the  top  of  that  hill  on  Hope  Bay,  in  Khode  Island, 
where  King  Philip  made  his  last  stand  against  the 
white  man;  and  I  thought  of  it  not  only  because  the 
two  hills  are  in  a  general  way  alike  in  looking  over  an 
expanse  of  land  and  water  along  a  generally  level 
coast  line,  but  because  the  head  of  King  Philip,  that 
noble  Indian  who  had  been  given  his  name  by  the 
white  men  from  King  Philip  of  Macedon,  was  brought 
here  to  Plymouth  and  placed  publicly  on  a  spike, 
where  it  remained  a  memento  of  ignoble  triumph  for 
many  years.  Webster,  in  an  oration  at  Plymouth, 
said,  "like  the  dove  from  the  Ark,  the  Mayflower  put 
forth  only  to  find  rest";  but  the  people  who  came  in 
the  Mayflower  were  certainly  not  all  doves.  The 
barrel  of  the  very  gun  that  belonged  to  King  Philip 
has  been  preserved,  not  as  a  matter  of  shame  but  of 

306 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PEOVINCETOWN 

pride,  and  it  is  shown  in  the  museum  of  Plymouth  in 
Pilgrim  Hall. 

It  is  pleasant  to  notice  on  the  stones  above  the 
graves  the  frequency  of  the  name  of  Priscilla,  and  the 
dates  show  that  it  was  a  common  name,  even  before 
the  time  when  Longfellow  made  it  so  famous,  thus 
showing  that  from  early  days  the  history  of  this  sweet 
young  Pilgrim  girl  fascinated  the  general  imagina- 
tion ;  or,  as  Longfellow  himself  would  have  expressed 
it,  that  the  region  was  "full  of  the  name  and  the  fame 
of  the  Puritan  maiden  Priscilla." 

Priscilla  was  a  very  real  girl,  and  her  last  name  was 
Mullines;  not  the  "Mulling"  into  which  the  name  has 
been  rather  commonized.  But  the  name  was  spelled 
with  some  variety  even  by  Governor  Bradford,  who 
mentioned  it  three  times  in  his  history  and  each  time 
differently,  the  most  important  entry  being  that  "Mr. 
Molines,  and  his  wife,  his  sone,  and  his  servant,  dyed 
the  first  winter.  Only  his  dougter  Priscila  survied, 
and  maried  with  John  Alden,  who  are  both  living, 
and  have  11.  children.  And  their  eldest  daughter  is 
married,  &  hath  five  children." 

Bradford  himself  did  not  stand  much  for  romance, 
and  it  is  from  other  sources  that  there  comes  the 
story  of  the  courtship  of  John  Alden.  It  seems,  so 
the  old  story  has  it,  that  Alden  first  presented  the  pro- 
posal of  Standish,  not  to  Priscilla,  but  to  Priscilla 's 
father,  who  promptly  called  Priscilla  into  the  confer- 
ence, with  the  result  that  she  made  the  forever-to-be- 
remembered  query  of  the  bashful  John  as  to  speaking 
for  himself.    What  her  father  said  or  thought  is  not 

307 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

on  record,  but  it  was  very  shortly  after  the  proposal 
that  John  and  Priscilla  were  married ;  and  the  tradi- 
tion is,  not  as  Longfellow  gives  it,  that  Standish  and 
Alden  again  became  friends,  but  that  Alden  was  never 
forgiven  by  Standish.  John  Alden's  daughter  Sarah, 
however,  did  afterwards  marry  Standish 's  son  Alex- 
ander. 

Courtships  and  marriages  went  very  quickly  in 
those  early  days,  when  children  were  a  decided  asset 
to  any  family  in  aiding  to  clear  the  wilderness,  and 
when  loneliness  was  a  great  disadvantage.  As  an  ex- 
ample, the  wife  of  Winslow  died  in  March  of  1621,  the 
husband  of  Susanna  White  died  in  February  of  the 
same  year,  and  in  May  of  that  year  the  short-time 
widower  Winslow  and  the  short-time  widow  White 
married.  Miles  Standish,  in  his  courtship  of  Pris- 
cilla, was  similarly  hasty ;  for  his  wife,  whom  he  had 
married  in  England,  died  late  in  January,  1621,  and 
as  Alden  and  Priscilla  were  married  early  in  that  year 
it  may  be  seen  how  swift  was  the  courtship  of  Stan- 
dish, and  also  that  Alden  was  not  at  all  slow  in  follow- 
ing up  his  own  desires.  After  this  refusal  Standish 
waited  three  years  before  he  married  for  the  second 
time,  but  it  is  possible  that  some  other  woman  refused 
him  meanwhile. 

There  is  a  collection  at  Plymouth,  in  Pilgrim  Hall, 
which  is  rich  in  mementoes  of  the  very  early  days. 
There  is  the  great  circular  gate-legged  table,  almost 
six  feet  across,  rigid  and  strong  and  plain  and  under- 
braced,  which  was  the  council  table  when  Winslow 
was  governor.    There  is  the  very  chair  of  the  first 

308 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PEOVINCETOWN 

governor,  John  Carver,  who  died  in  the  first  winter, 
a  plain,  massive  turned  chair  which  seems  as  severe 
as  the  popular  idea  of  the  most  severe  belongings. 
There  is  the  veritable  sword  of  Miles  Standish,  a 
Damascus  blade.  There  is  a  dear  little  wicker  cradle, 
a  Dutch  cradle,  in  shape  like  a  basket  with  a  hood  to 
keep  off  the  draft,  carried  with  the  Mayflower  for 
little  Peregrine  White,  named  from  the  peregrinations 
of  his  parents,  and  the  first  white  child  born  on  the 
soil  of  New  England.  Little  Oceanus  Hopkins  might 
have  taken  away  the  title  of  precedence  from  Pere- 
grine had  Oceanus  not  been  born,  as  his  name  implies, 
before  the  Mayflower  reached  the  promised  land. 
Many  other  things,  little  and  big,  are  preserved. 
There  are  early  spoons  and  early  needle  work. 
There  is  some  superb  ecclesiastical  silver  designed  for 
the  early  churches  and  preserved  with  record  of 
where  it  was  made. 

Standing  anywhere  along  the  shore  at  Plymouth, 
or  on  the  hill,  one  cannot  but  notice  a  monument  that 
rises,  lofty  and  striking,  far  out  beyond  the  leftward 
stretch  of  the  bay ;  and  this  is  the  monument  to  Miles 
Standish.  Although  he  was  not  a  Puritan,  and  not 
really  a  Pilgrim,  for  he  was  a  soldier  of  fortune,  who 
had  been  fighting  for  the  Dutch  against  the  Spanish 
and  then  as  a  soldier  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  a  Dalgetty, 
who  was  out  of  employment  as  a  fighter  when  the 
Pilgrims  sailed  and  was  engaged  as  an  excellent  man 
to  meet  the  savages,  he  has  been  given  a  far  more 
prominent  monument  than  has  any  other  of  those 
early  men ;  and  so  nobly  did  he  develop,  at  Plymouth, 

309 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

in  bravery,  in  self-sacrifice,  in  the  finest  qualities  of 
manhood  that  he  well  deserves  prominent  remem- 
brance. The  old  chronicle  has  it  Captain  Standish 
and  Elder  Brewster,  more  than  any  others,  "to 
their  great  comendations  be  it  spoken,  spared  no 
pains  night  nor  day,  but  with  abundance  of  toyle 
and  hazard  of  their  own  strength  helped  others  in 
sickness  and  death,  a  rare  example  worthy  to  be  re- 
membred";  and  in  addition  Standish  was  a  man  of 
absolute  bravery. 

The  monument  is  reached  by  a  roundabout  way,  of 
several  miles,  from  Plymouth.  The  figure  of  Stan- 
dish tops  the  structure;  and  by  some  unexplainable 
freak  he  is  made  to  face  away  from  the  town  that 
honored  him  and  for  which  he  did  so  much.  The 
monument  is  on  the  summit  of  a  considerable  hill  and 
there  is  in  view  a  long,  long  line  of  shore ;  and  looking 
toward  the  sea  one  may  see,  as  I  have  seen,  the  water 
dotted  with  the  mackerel  fleet,  setting  homeward ;  and 
a  thin  gray  vagueness  on  the  horizon  marks  the 
distant  line  of  Cape  Cod.  Looking  landward,  one 
sees  endless  miles  of  bluish  pine  woods  through  which 
the  white  spire  of  a  meeting  house  rises  with  effective 
unexpectedness,  and  looking  across  the  bay  toward 
Plymouth  there  is  a  wonderful  effect  as  if  the  city 
is  still  a  place  crowded  against  the  waterside  at  the 
edge  of  a  vast  wilderness. 

A  rather  small  old  house,  a  story  and  a  half  high, 
sleeping  under  the  shelter  of  this  hill,  a  house  with 
a  sort  of  distinction  in  spite  of  its  smallness,  and 

310 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PBOVINCETOWN 

with  a  great  lilac  bush  at  its  front,  a  house  that  must 
always  have  been  rather  solitary,  is  the  house  in  which 
some  have  believed  that  Standish  lived  for  the  last 
years  of  his  life ;  but  in  reality  it  would  seem  that  his 
own  house,  long  vanished,  stood  close  beside  where 
this  house  stands  and  that  this  was  put  up  by  an  im- 
mediate descendant. 

That  Standish  was  a  short  man,  sinewy  and  robust, 
and  that  his  little  library  actually  contained,  just  as  the 
poet  has  described  it,  the  Commentaries  of  Caesar,  are 
among  the  rather  slender  facts  known  in  regard  to 
his  personality,  but  an  inventory  of  the  property  left 
by  him  at  his  death  itemizes  that  in  his  possession, 
among  other  things,  were  4  bedsteads  and  1  settle 
bed,  5  feather  beds  with  blankets  and  sheets,  1  table- 
cloth and  4  napkins,  4  iron  pots,  3  brass  kettles  and 
one  dozen  wooden  plates — with  no  plates  of  any  bet- 
ter material  mentioned.  There  were  muskets  and 
sword;  and,  as  if  in  defiance  of  the  spinning-wheel  of 
Priscilla  which,  after  all,  was  more  a  matter  of  con- 
cern to  Alden  than  to  him,  there  were  two  spinning- 
wheels.  Horses  and  cattle  must  have  increased  in 
the  colony  since  the  earliest  days  for  he  left  at  his 
death  2  mares,  2  colts  and  1  young  horse,  4  oxen,  6 
cows,  3  heifers,  1  calf,  8  sheep,  2  rams,  1  wether  and 
14  swine. 

At  quite  a  distance,  naturally,  from  this  spot,  is 
where  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  lived,  but,  like  this, 
within  the  limits  of  Duxbury.  It  is  a  pleasant  drive 
across  country,  from  one  place  to  the  other,  through 

311 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

a  region  of  blue  inlets  setting  in  from  the  blue,  blue 
sea,  with  much  of  pine  woods,  and  of  the  little  bushes 
that  bear  beach  plums. 

The  house  built  here  by  John  Alden  has  dis- 
appeared, but  the  present  building  stands  on  its  site 
and,  it  is  believed,  was  built  by  a  grandson.  But  it 
looks  old  enough  to  have  been  built  toward  the  end  of 
John  Alden 's  long  life,  and  it  is  possible,  though  not 
probable,  that  he  actually  lived  in  it.  Often,  it  is  im- 
possible to  fix  the  precise  date  of  construction  of  an 
ancient  house,  as  the  only  definite  records  are  likely 
to  be  of  land  alone  and  not  the  buildings. 

This  Alden  house  stands  on  the  top  of  a  low  mound ; 
it  is  shingled-sided ;  and  the  present  occupant  confided 
to  me  that  if  he  did  not  keep  a  close  eye  on  visitors 
every  silvery  old  shingle  would  soon  be  stripped  off 
as  a  souvenir!  The  entire  front  of  the  house  is 
massed  in  a  luxurious  greenery  of  grapevines,  en- 
twined with  scarlet  dotted  trumpet-vines ;  a  peach  tree 
is  espaliered  on  the  side  and  a  great  trumpet-vine 
has  clambered  upon  the  roof;  and  nearby  is  a  field 
that,  when  I  saw  it,  was  a  great  yellow  splendor  of 
golden-rod,  bordered  empurplingly  with  asters. 

How  strange  it  must  all  have  seemed  to  Alden !  He 
never  intended  to  be  a  Pilgrim.  He  was  a  cooper, 
hired  at  Southampton  when  the  Mayflower  touched 
there,  and  it  was  expected  that  he  would  return  in 
the  ship  from  America.  But  he  was  i '  a  hopf ull  young 
man,"  and  the  leaders  quietly  hoped  that  he  would 
remain — and  Priscilla  did  the  rest.  It  is  so  pleasant 
to  think  of  the  poetic  wedding  journey  with  the  bride 

312 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PEOVINCETOWN 

mounted  on  the  white  bull,  that  it  is  needlessly 
iconoclastic  to  point  out  that  the  very  first  cattle, 
three  heifers  and  a  bull,  did  not  reach  Plymouth  until 
1624. 

It  is  sometimes  forgotten  that  the  first  landing  of 
the  Pilgrims  in  the  New  World  was  not  made  at  Ply- 
mouth but  at  the  inside  of  the  tip  of  Cape  Cod;  where, 
not  long  after  their  visit,  the  settlement  of  Province- 
town  was  made. 

Cape  Cod,  at  the  time  of  their  visit,  was  a  desolate 
region,  but  had  earlier  been  visited  by  others.  First, 
the  Norsemen;  afterwards,  Bartholomew  Gosnold, 
who  gave  the  cape  its  fishy  name ;  even  the  picturesque 
Champlain  made  a  brief  stop  here,  as  did  the  equally 
picturesque  Captain  John  Smith,  who  described  the 
fields  of  corn  and  ' '  salvage  gardens. ' '  So  many  peo- 
ple were  here  before  the  Pilgrims  as  to  give  almost 
an  effect  of  crowded  life !  But  it  was  lonely  enough 
when  the  Pilgrims  actually  came,  though  they  did 
finally  see  some  Indians,  who,  although  they  ran  off, 
did  so,  "  whistling  to  their  dogge" ! 

Sand  is  the  principal  product  of  Provincetown.  The 
whole  Cape  is  shifting  sand,  that  changes  with  every 
wind,  and  that  makes  hills  into  valleys  and  valleys 
into  hills,  and  that  threatens  to  destroy  the  little  town 
itself. 

Many  have  been  the  wrecks  on  Cape  Cod;  and  most 
interesting  was  that  of  the  Somerset,  on  the  outer 
edge  of  the  narrow  cape.  This  was  the  big  man-of- 
war,  of  from  forty  to  sixty  cannon  and  a  crew  of  al- 
most five  hundred  men,  under  whose  lee,  when  it 

313 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

was  in  Boston  harbor,  Paul  Bevere  was  rowed  when 
starting  with  the  message  to  Lexington.  It  aided  in 
the  bombardment  of  the  Americans  on  the  day  of 
Bunker  Hill,  and  afterwards  won  a  cruel  reputation 
for  its  seizures  of  American  shipping.  In  a  great 
storm  in  1778  it  was  driven  ashore  here,  and  the  tra- 
dition of  the  Cape  has  it  that,  most  of  the  men  being 
absent  on  military  duty,  the  women  took  an  active 
share  in  holding  captive  the  men  from  the  wreck  and 
in  getting  the  guns  to  land  to  save  them  for  the  use 
of  the  American  army.  The  wreck  was  completely 
dismantled;  gradually  it  was  covered  with  sand  and 
the  very  place  was  forgotten.  Years  afterwards,  a 
storm  uncovered  it,  and  then  the  sands  covered  it 
again,  and  many  years  later  it  was  again  uncovered 
and  fully  identified  by  details  of  its  structure  from 
official  records  furnished  by  the  Admiralty  in  Lon- 
don. Before  the  sands  covered  it  again  I  saw  it  my- 
self, with  its  grim  and  blackened  vertebrae;  and  it 
was  fascinating  to  find  such  a  memento  of  the  Bevolu- 
tion  lying  on  this  lonely  outward  shore,  so  near  little 
Provincetown. 

Growing  wild  in  hollows  among  the  dunes,  with 
scrub  pines  and  oaks,  is  the  marvelously  fragrant  bay- 
berry  from  which  the  early  settlers  made  their  can- 
dles and  from  which  a  later  generation  made  bay  rum. 
And  in  these  hollows  wild  roses  grow  in  luxurious- 
ness,  and  innumerable  red  beach-plums. 

Provincetown  is  distinctly  a  sailor's  town;  there 
are  sailors  here  who  have  been  all  over  the  world ;  but 
it  will  bs  noticed  that  "barges"  are  not  boats  but 

314 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PKOVINCETOWN 

wagons !  A  figurehead  from  some  old  ship  leans  for- 
ward from  a  post;  fish-shaped  weather-vanes  turn 
with  the  varying  winds;  you  naturally  see  a  seamen's 
bank;  a  profusion  of  binoculars  pervades  the  place; 
you  may  even  catch  sight  of  the  backbone  of  a  whale 
in  a  captain's  yard ;  wreckage  is  stacked  for  fire-wood ; 
and  in  some  of  the  old  pilastered  or  porticoed  houses 
there  are  preserved  the  original  logs  of  whaling  trips, 
showing  whales,  pictured  in  ink  that  long  since  yel- 
lowed, to  mark  the  days  of  fortunate  catches. 

Every  sailor  seems  to  have  the  title  of  captain; 
most,  in  fact,  have  a  right  to  the  title,  for  each  has 
been  in  charge  of  at  least  a  fishing-boat;  and  these 
captains  are  men  of  individual  interest.  One  is  a 
gatherer  of  ambergris  (romantic  name!),  and  he  also 
sells  watch-makers'  oil,  which  he  poetically  procures 
from  porpoise  heads.  Another  of  the  captains,  a 
gentle  soul,  is  a  story-teller  who,  unfortunately,  has 
so  out-told  himself  that  the  same  narratives  are  given 
over  and  over.  "Have  I  ever  told  this  before?"  I 
heard  him  interrupt  himself  to  ask  one  day ;  and  when 
the  goaded  interlocutor,  another  captain,  replied  that 
he  had,  the  first  captain  responded,  gently  tolerant, 
"Oh,  well,  I'll  tell  it  again  then."  Another  captain, 
confiding  to  me  that  he  had  been  married  fifty-five 
years,  gravely  added,  as  he  pointed  to  his  old  dog 
lying  beside  him,  "And  that  is  all  I've  got  left  to  show 
for  it."  Another  told  of  a  life-time  sea-friend  who 
had  recently  died  at  the  age  of  ninety-two.  "Did  he 
leave  any  family?"  "No,"  said  the  captain.  "His 
father  and  mother  were  both  dead. ' '    When,  speaking 

315 


THE  BOOK  OE  BOSTON 

with  another,  I  commented  on  the  roses  growing  in 
profuse  loveliness  in  the  gardens  of  the  town,  in  spite 
of  the  difficulties  of  sand,  he  replied,  from  some  pessi- 
mistic association  of  ideas :  "  Yes,  but  if  there  is  ever 
a  year  when  the  rose-bugs  don't  get  after  the  roses  the 
dogfish  are  sure  to  get  after  the  mackerel."  But  op- 
timism is  the  prevailing  note,  as  with  a  captain,  an 
ancient,  earnest  citizen,  who  exclaimed  to  me:  "Why, 
the  man  who  would  complain  of  this  Cape  Cod  climate 
would  complain  if  he  were  going  to  be  hung!" 
Another  still  tells  the  story  of  a  sea-serpent  that  he 
saw  many  years  ago;  and  I  was  told  that  when  his 
townsmen  ridiculed  him  and  frankly  told  him,  from 
knowledge  of  his  idiosyncrasies,  that  he  must  have 
been  drinking,  he  went  before  a  notary  and  made 
affidavit  that  "I  was  not  drinking  on  the  day  I  saw  the 
sea-serpent" — and  he  still  fails  to  see  why  everybody 
laughs.  Another,  speaking  of  the  general  truthful- 
ness of  the  place,  deemed  it  measurably  referable  to 
ancient  strictness  of  law,  giving  as  an  example  that  in 
the  good  old  formative  days  ' '  a  captain  was  fined  five 
dollars  for  lying  about  a  whale." 

The  Portuguese,  always  locally  referred  to  as  uPor- 
tygees,"  have  come  in  so  freely  from  the  Azores  and 
the  Cape  de  Verde  Islands,  that  they  give  a  markedly 
alien  touch,  with  their  distinctive  language,  religion, 
dress  and  costumes.  The  town  is  permeated  by  them. 
They  are  active  rivals,  on  the  sea,  of  the  descendants 
of  the  early  Americans,  and  I  remember  that  a  sail- 
ing race,  open  to  all,  was  won  by  a  boat  whose  captain 
and  crew  were  all  Portuguese ;  but  none  the  less  did 

316 


PLYMOUTH  AND  PROVINCETOWN 

Provincetown  royally  welcome  the  victors,  and  deck 
its  streets  with  brooms  and  buckets.  A  still  further 
alien  touch  is  given  by  a  lofty  monument,  set  up  a 
few  years  ago  as  a  memorial  to  the  landing  here  of  the 
Pilgrims,  and  which,  from  some  odd  reason,  is  of  dis- 
tinctly Italian  style. 

A  town-crier  still  busies  himself  with  the  crier's 
ancient  duties,  and  the  townsfolk  claim  that  the  cus- 
tom has  kept  on  undisturbed  from  early  times. 

The  talk  and  interests  of  Provincetown  are  of  cod 
and  mackerel  and  haddock,  and  when  a  boat  comes 
in  with  a  catch  the  event  is  eagerly  discussed  along 
the  entire  three  miles  of  far-flung  water  front.  The 
town  is  principally  one  long  and  sinuous  and  atten- 
uated street,  but  there  are  also  little  lanes  twisting 
away  from  it.  A  few  old-time  houses  still  remain 
with  silver-gray  shingles  on  their  roofs  and  sides. 
Everywhere  is  an  aspect  of  scrupulous  neatness,  as  if 
on  shipboard,  and  the  houses  in  general  have  a  snug- 
gled and  tucked-in  look  as  if  triced  down  for  a  storm. 
Many  are  shaded  by  big  trees ;  and  it  is  curious  that 
there  are  so  many  great  elms  and  enormous  swamp- 
willows  in  spite  of  the  discouraging  environment. 

When  the  tide  sweeps  out,  great  flats  of  green  and 
yellow  and  gray  stretch  off  in  front  of  the  town,  and 
amphibious  horses,  half  submerged,  draw  far  out,  in 
the  track  of  the  receding  tides,  little  carts,  likewise 
half-submerged,  into  which  to  unload  such  fishing- 
boats  as  return  at  a  time  when  they  cannot  reach  the 
piers. 

But  sand  is  the  prevailing  feature.    Surely,  round 

317 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

about  Provincetown  is  where  the  Walrus  and  the  Car- 
penter walked  together.    You  remember  the  lines? 

"The  sea  was  wet  as  wet  could  be, 
The  sands  were  dry  as  dry. 
You  could  not  see  a  cloud,  because 
No  cloud  was  in  the  sky: 
The  Walrus  and  the  Carpenter 
Were  walking  close  at  hand ; 
They  wept  like  anything  to  see 
Such  quantities  of  sand : 
'If  this  were  only  cleared  away,' 
They  said,  'it  would  be  grand !'  " 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

"the  night  shall  be  filled  with  MUSIC* ' 

SAIL  from  Liverpool  on  Saturday  for 
Boston,' '  writes  Thackeray  to  "My 
dearest  old  friend,"  Edward  Fitzger- 
ald, and  lie  says  he  is  "very  grave  and 
solemn,"  and  he  writes  with  gravity 
and  solemnity  of  what  may  happen  to 
his  wife  and  daughters  if  anything 
should  happen  to  him ! 

It  seems  odd  that  a  journey  to  Boston,  whether  by 
an  American  or  an  Englishman,  should  ever  have 
aroused  such  tragic  forebodings.  Equally  curious  is 
the  description,  by  William  Dean  Howells,  of  his  own 
first  visit  there,  for  he  went,  as  he  set  it  down,  "as 
the  passionate  pilgrim  from  the  West  approached  his 
Holy  Land  in  Boston. ' '  And  Boston  still  likes  people 
to  come  in  this  spirit ! 

One  is  tempted  to  wonder  if  Boston  does  not  spend 
too  much  time  looking  at  her  intellectual  features  in 
the  mirror ;  after  all,  she  is  pretty  old  for  that — she  is 
almost  at  her  three  hundredth  birthday.  But,  if  it 
should  really  be  that  the  city  displays  a  little  too  much 
self-consciousness,  a  little  too  much  readiness  to  re- 
sent anything  that  even  slightly  savors  of  criticism, 

319 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

there  is  much  of  gratification  in  being  not  only  a  city 
of  famous  places  and  famous  deeds  but  at  the  same 
time  one  of  character  and  of  individuality.  Little 
things  may  mark  individuality,  quite  as  well  as  great 
or  even  better;  and  it  has  always  interested  me 
that  Boston  once  had  an  ordinance  forbidding  any 
person  to  keep  a  dog  over  ten  inches  in  height,  and 
that  even  now  rump-steak  is  gladly  paid  for  by  most 
Bostonians  as  the  most  expensive  of  cuts!  In  all 
seriousness,  the  city  has  a  very  real  individuality. 
And  with  a  city  of  individuality  almost  anything  can 
be  overlooked. 

And  there  is  so  much  of  the  picturesque  in  Boston ; 
the  old  houses  and  their  old  environment,  the  sea- 
gulls on  a  sunny  winter's  day  circling  and  crying  over 
Beacon  Hill;  the  fine  old  tales  and  traditions.  The 
very  "  twilight  that  surrounds  the  border-land  of  old 
romance' '  is  in  Boston. 

And  one  does  not  need  to  enumerate  the  list  of 
statesmen  and  writers  who  have  aided  to  make  Boston 
glorious  and  who  have  shone  in  the  glory  that  they 
helped  to  create.  And  yet,  the  attitude  of  Boston  to- 
ward Hawthorne  and  Poe,  perhaps  the  two  most  dis- 
tinctive geniuses  of  American  literature,  ought  also 
to  be  remembered. 

Boston  did  not  recognize  Hawthorne  when  he  was 
struggling  for  literary  foothold,  even  though  for  a 
time  he  lived  here.  And  Poe,  though  few  Bostonians 
know  it  and  none  boasts  of  it,  was  Boston-born !  Poe 
was  the  child  of  a  pair  of  poor  traveling  actors;  it 
would  seem,  though  there  is  no  precise  certainty,  that 

320 


".THE  NIGHT  FILLED  WITH  MUSIC" 

the  house  where  he  was  born  was  in  the  vicinity  of 
where  afterwards  was  built  the  Hollis  Street  Theater. 
Poe's  associations  with  Boston  were  not  happy;  he 
was  here  later  in  his  life,  as  a  young  man,  poor  and 
disappointed,  and  enlisted  here  under  an  assumed 
name,  as  a  private  soldier.  He  called  Boston  "Frog- 
pondium,"  meaning  the  same  as  the  late  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  Bostonian  of  Bostonians,  who  frankly 
wrote,  as  his  last  word,  that  "it  is  provincial;  it  tends 
to  stagnate. "  As  to  Poe,  I  think  that  the  severe  re- 
spectability of  Boston  has  caused  him  to  be  ignored : 
he  was  the  son  of  poor  players,  not  Bostonians ;  and 
he  was   a  man  who   sometimes   drank  too   much! 

Howells,  who  knew  the  city  well,  has  somewhere  set 
down  that  "Boston  would  rather  perish  by  fire  and 
sword  than  to  be  suspected  of  vulgarity;  a  critical, 
fastidious,  reluctant  Boston,  dissatisfied  with  the  rest 
of  the  hemisphere. ' '  But,  he  might  well  have  added, 
a  brave  Boston,  a  vastly  interesting  Boston,  a  Boston 
that  every  American  should  see  and  know. 

Of  all  my  memories  of  Boston  I  think  that  the  most 
fascinating  is  that  of  the  Christmas  Eve  observance 
on  Beacon  Hill,  an  affair  of  extraordinary  beauty. 

The  sun  sets  on  a  Beacon  Hill  immaculately  swept 
and  garnished.  Every  window  has  been  washed  until 
it  glistens.  Every  knocker  and  doorknob  has  been 
polished.  And  at  the  windows  of  almost  every  house 
are  set  rows  and  rows  of  candles,  along  the  sills,  along 
the  middle  sash,  in  straight  lines,  in  curves,  in  tri- 
angles. Frequently  there  are  as  many  as  twenty 
candles  to  a  row,  or  forty  to  a  window,  or  even  more 

321 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

where  the  rows  are  banked.  Nor  are  the  candles  little 
Christmas-tree  things,  but  the  stout,  white  candles  of 
use,  and  in  some  cases  there  are  even  the  great  church- 
altar  candles,  and  some  houses  show  the  rare  old  silver 
candlesticks  of  the  past. 

Nor  is  it  only  the  principal  windows  of  a  few  houses ; 
it  is  practically  every  window  of  almost  every  house ; 
and  some  even  put  candles  in  the  queer  Bostonian 
octagon  cupola  or  lantern  that  stands  upon  the  very 
roof  above  the  central  halls  and  stairs. 

Shortly  after  seven  o  'clock  the  illumination  begins. 
One  by  one,  window  by  window,  house  by  house,  the 
lights  flare  softly  up.  And  such  a  wonderful  illumi- 
nation as  is  made!  From  basement  to  garret  the 
lights  shine  softly  out  into  the  night. 

With  the  first  lighting,  visitors  have  begun  to  come ; 
not  foreign-born  visitors,  but  visitors  distinctly  Amer- 
ican ;  it  is  an  American  observance  among  these  fine 
old  American  homes.  The  people  go  pacing  quietly 
about  on  Chestnut  Street,  Mount  Vernon,  Pinckney, 
Cedar  and  Walnut  Streets,  and  Louisburg  Square — 
and  the  fine  old  district  is  finely  aglow,  for  hundreds 
of  houses  are  illumined. 

Enchanting  glimpses  may  be  had  into  paneled  and 
pilastered  rooms,  rich  in  their  white  and  mahogany; 
glimpses  of  decorous  and  beautiful  living;  glimpses 
of  chairs  of  stately  strength,  of  sideboards  of  delect- 
able curves,  of  family  portraits  by  Stuart  or  Copley. 
And  every  doorknocker  has  its  holly  or  wreath. 
Each  of  these  old  streets  is  a  soft  blaze  of  candle-light 

322 


•  •  •  • 
•  ••• 


••       • • «• 
•  •  •  * 

•         •    • 


•        •      •  •• 


"THE  NIGHT  FILLED  WITH  MUSIC" 

with  myriad  reciprocating  reflections  from  the  lighted 
windows  of  one  side  to  the  windows  opposite ;  and  the 
soft  light  brings  into  newer  beauty  the  curved  lines 
of  the  house-fronts  and  the  fine  old  distinguished 
shapes.  The  crowds  increase;  the  streets  gradually 
become  thronged ;  all  are  thrilled  with  quiet,  expectant 
interest. 

And  at  length  comes  the  distant  sound  of  music,  the 
sound  of  voices  singing  an  ancient  carol  of  Christmas- 
time. Nearer  and  nearer  come  the  singers,  caroling 
as  they  come,  and  they  pause  in  front  of  one  of  the 
houses  to  sing,  while  all  about  them  are  hushed  and 
quiet.  Perhaps  some  of  them  will  carry  old-time 
watchman-lanterns,  in  their  hands  or  aloft  on  poles, 
ancient  lanterns  of  perforated  tin  with  candles  burn- 
ing inside. 

On  the  caroling  company  slowly  goes,  and  after  a 
while  you  hear  another  company  come  singing,  and  the 
people,  massing  the  streets,  are  all  absorbed,  earnest, 
impressed,  for  it  is  all  so  beautiful,  this  sweet  caroling 
in  the  candle-lighted  streets.  In  all,  in  the  course  of 
the  evening,  there  are  probably  four  or  five  different 
companies,  and  one  group  in  particular  are  the  singers 
from  the  Church  of  the  Advent,  at  the  foot  of  the 
Hill,  and  these  generally  come  later  than  the  others, 
each  group  choosing  its  own  hour  for  starting.  "When 
the  carolers  pause  in  front  of  a  house  a  few  people  are 
likely  to  come  and  stand  at  the  windows ;  but,  if  any, 
it  is  only  a  few ;  no  welcoming  is  expected,  no  greeting 
or  thanks.    The  singers  do  not  sing  as  in  any  sense 

323 


THE  BOOK  OF  BOSTON 

a  personal  tribute.  They  carol  because  it  is  Christ- 
mas. They  go  about  on  Beacon  Hill  because  it  is  Old 
Boston. 

They  stop  in  front  of  a  pair  of  old  houses  used  as 
a  Protestant  Episcopal  nunnery ;  the  houses  are  ablaze 
with  candles,  like  the  other  houses  all  about,  and  a  few 
Sisters  come  quietly  to  the  windows,  making  a  posi- 
tively mediaeval  scene  in  this  American  setting,  with 
their  gentle  faces  within  the  broad  white  lines  of 
coiffe  and  collar,  contrasting  with  the  somber  black 
of  their  robes. 

Not  all  the  singers  are  old  nor  are  all  young;  they 
are  of  varied  ages,  young  men  and  young  women, 
older  men  and  older  women.  And  most  of  the  carols 
that  are  sung  are  the  old-time  carols  that  have  come 
down  through  the  centuries,  and  one  or  two  are  even 
sung  in  the  old  Latin.  The  last  of  the  singers  finish 
their  rounds  about  ten  o  'clock  and  until  that  time  the 
crowd  still  lingers.  But  ten  o'clock  is  late  in  Boston, 
for  this  is  an  early  city;  and  at  ten  o'clock  one  hears 
the  final  singing  of  these  fine  old  tunes,  echoing  and  re- 
echoing between  these  fine  old-fashioned  houses. 

The  night 's  candles  are  almost  burned  out.  Shorter 
and  shorter  they  have  been  getting,  but  none  the  less 
bravely  have  they  continued  to  blaze.  And  now, 
house  by  house,  window  by  window,  candle  by  candle, 
the  lights  are  extinguished  and  the  streets  go  grad- 
ually to  darkness.  Almost  suddenly,  now,  they  are 
deserted.  Almost  suddenly  the  last  of  the  people 
have  gone.    The  houses  are  dark,  whole  streets  are 

324 


"THE  NIGHT  FILLED  WITH  MUSIC" 

dark.  The  entire  hill  is  in  darkness.  The  hill  is  in. 
silence.  It  all  seems  like  an  unreal  memory — Christ- 
mas Eve  in  Boston. 


7M-A 


INDEX 


A 


Abbey,     mural    decorations    by, 

201. 
Acorn  Street,  32. 
Adams,  Abigail,  246,  247. 
Adams,    Charles    Francis,    236; 

his  estimate  of  Boston,  321. 
Adams,  John:  birthplace  of,  245; 

at   feast   at   Dorchester,    208; 

grave    of,     248;     portrait    by 

Copley,    235;     relations    with 

Hancock,  123. 
Adams,  John  Quincy:  birthplace 

of,  245;  grave  of,  248. 
Alcott,   Bronson:    characteristics, 

46;      Emerson's     opinion     of, 

297;  homes  of,  45,  47,  297. 
Alcott,    Louisa    M.:    on    Boston 

Common,      18;      in      Concord, 

297;  homes  of,  45,  47,  49,  297; 

death  of,   47;    grave  of,  298; 

"Little   Women,"   297. 
Alden,  John,  307,  308;  home  of, 

in  Duxbury,  311,  312. 
Aldrich,   homes   of,    40,    42,   44; 

"Story  of  a  Bad  Boy,"  44. 
"America,"  first  sung,  107. 
Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery 

Company,  111,  138. 
Andre"  and  General  Knox,  214. 
Andros,  Lady,  funeral  of,  109. 
Appleton,  the  wit,  107. 
Arnold  Arboretum,  161. 
Athenaeum,  the,  101-103. 
Authors,  nomadic,  49. 
"Autocrat     of     the     Breakfast 

Table,"  59. 


Back  Bay,   188-194;   its  extent, 


327 


188;  its  statues,  189;  opinion 
of,  by  Henry  James,  192;  with 
the  Fenlands,  202. 

Bancroft,  145. 

Beacon  Hill,  20-34;  Christmas 
Eve  observance  on,  321-325; 
greenery  of,  30,  31;  houses  of, 
22,  30,  33,  35-48 ;  steepness  of, 
20-22;  Thackeray  and  "Es- 
mond," 37. 

Beacon  Street,  24,  37,  191. 

Beacons  in  early  days,  21. 

Bellingham  Court,  29. 

Blaxton,  the  hermit,  63. 

Bookshops  of  Boston,  157. 

Booth,  Edwin,  89. 

Boston  Bags,  158. 

Boston  Massacre,  13,  128,  131. 

Boston  Tea  Party,  139,  140. 

Bradford  Manuscript,  69,  119— 
121. 

Brook  Farm,  239-245. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  99. 

Brown,  Alice,  home  of,  96. 

Buildings,  height  of,  146. 

Bulfinch,  66,  67,  72,  93,  95,  134, 
135. 

Bunker  Hill,  180-187;  battle 
watched  by  Gage,  166 ;  soldiers 
reviewed  for,  229;  monument, 
seen  from  Charlestown,  180, 
from  Copp's  Hill,  171;  Web- 
ster's oration,  183. 

Burgoyne,  General:  his  opinion 
of  Bunker  Hill,  182,  of  Lexing- 
ton, 285;  watching  Bunker 
Hill  battle,  166. 

Burying-Grounds :  Cambridge, 
224;  Central,  11-13;  Concord, 
298;  Copp's  Hill,  170,  171; 
King's  Chapel,  110,  111,  115; 
Old    Granary,    102-106;    Old 


INDEX 


South  Church,  115;  Plymouth, 
303,  305;  Webster's,  252. 


Cambridge,  223-238. 

Cambridge  Elm,  228. 

Candles,   in   windows,   321,   322. 

Carols,  on  Beaeon  Hill,  322-324. 

Cats,  in  Louisburg  Square,  26. 

Central  Burying-Ground,  11-13. 

Channing,  43,  99. 

Charles,  the,  32,  188,  190. 

Charles  Street,  39,  40,  41. 

Charles  Street  Square,  191. 

Chavannes,  mural  decorations 
by,  201. 

Chesapeake  and  Shannon,  279. 

Chestnut  Street,  Boston,  24,  50, 
51. 

Chestnut  Street,  Salem,  276-277. 

Christmas  Eve  on  Beacon  Hill, 
321-325. 

Churches:  Hollis  Street,  107; 
King's  Chapel,  112-115;  at 
Marblehead,  268;  Old  North, 
164-170;  Old  South,  115-121; 
Park  Street,  106-108;  at 
Quincy,  248;  at  Plymouth, 
305;  Trinity,  202. 

Cod  Fish,  the  Sacred,  70-71. 

Columbus  and  Aristides,  statues 
of,  25. 

Common,  the,  5-19;  British  sol- 
diers on,  15;  cows  on,  8; 
Emerson,  7,  8;  trees  of,  9;  no 
streets  through,  6;  the  spin- 
ning maidens,  17. 

Commonwealth  Avenue,  188-190. 

Concord,  285,  287,  290-292;  the 
bridge,  291;  Concord  Fight, 
relics  of,  69;  literary  associa- 
tions, 295-299;  present  aspect 
of,  294. 

Copley,  portraits  by:  John 
Adams,  235;  Hancock  and 
Dorothy  Q.,  78;  Thomas  Han- 
cock, 235;  his  frames  made  by 
Revere,  174. 

Copley  Square,  200,  202. 


328 


Copp's  Hill  Burying-Ground,  170, 

171. 
"Coronation,"  131. 
Cows  on  the  Common,  7,  8. 
Cradock  homestead,  260. 
Craigie,  Andrew,  227. 
Custom  House,  the  old,  144,  145. 
Custom  House,  the  new,  146. 


Danvers,  283. 

Dedham,  261. 

Deland,  Mrs.,  homes  of,  42,  43, 
49,  192;  "Old  Chester,"  43. 

Dickens,  and  the  blind  man,  35; 
liking  for  Boston,  36;  "Mar- 
tin Chuzzlewit,"  38. 

Dogs,  in  Boston,  17,  320. 

Dorchester  Heights,  208-222. 

"Dorothy  Q.'s,"  the,  78,  80,  81, 
249,  250. 

Downing  of  Downing  Street,  281. 

Duxbury,  311. 


E 


Emerson:  on  Boston  Common,  7, 
8;  at  Concord,  295,  296;  his 
grave,  298;  and  Margaret  Ful- 
ler, 87;  "President's  messen- 
ger," 230. 

Enthusiasms,  in  Boston,  18,  125. 

"Esmond";  Thackeray's  gift  to 
Prescott,  37. 

Essex  Institute,  281-283. 

Evacuation  of  Boston,  219,  220, 
260. 

Executions,  on  Boston  Common, 
16;  in  Salem,  275. 


Fairbanks  homestead,  261. 

Family,  importance  of,  in  Bos- 
ton, 194-196. 

Faneuil  Hall,  133-138;  farce 
given  at,  185. 

Fenlands,  the,  202-204. 

Fenway  Court,  203. 


INDEX 


Fields,  James  T.:  with  Dickens, 
35;  home  of,  39;  as  a  host, 
41;  position  in  Boston,  40; 
"The  Scarlet  Letter,"  271;  the 
Wayside  Inn,  256. 

Fish,  kinds  of,   in  Boston,   143. 

Fort  Hill  Park,  144. 

Frankland,  Sir  Henry,  114. 

Franklin:  his  birth  and  bap- 
tism, 115,  116;  his  parents, 
103,  116;  his  portrait  in  Cam- 
bridge, 235. 

Fuller,  Margaret;  at  Brook 
Farm,  241,  244;  with  Emer- 
son, 87. 

Furniture,  Old:  on  Beacon  Hill, 
33,  322;  in  Concord,  299;  at 
Essex  Institute,  282;  John 
Hancock's,  73;  in  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts,  203,  204;  at  Ply- 
mouth, 308,  309. 

G 

Gallows  Hill,  274. 

Gardner,  Mrs.,  home  of,  203. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  homes  of,  225, 

266. 
Glass,  purple,  in  windows,  27. 
Glover,  General,  189,  265. 
Granary    Burying-Ground,    102- 

106. 
Grant,  Robert,  home  of,  203. 


Hale,  Edward  Everett,  99. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  statue  of, 
189. 

Hancock,      John,      73-83;      his 
clothes,   76,    77;    his   cows  on 
the   Common,   8;    the   "empty 
barrel,"  123;  furniture  of,  73 
home  of,  73;  marriage  of,  80 
portrait  of,  78;  grave  of,  103 
his     pasture     for     the     State 
House,  72;  where  he  proposed, 
250;  his  widow,  74;  relations 
with  Washington,  123. 

Hancock,  Thomas,  portrait  of,  by 
Copley,  235. 


329 


Harding,  Chester,  101,  236. 

Harvard,  John,  statue  of,  231. 

Harvard  University,  223,  230- 
238;    School  of  Medicine,  205. 

Hawthorne:  in  Boston,  145;  at 
Brook  Farm,  239-243;  at 
Concord,  295,  296,  297;  his 
marriage  note,  45;  grave  of, 
298;  "House  of  the  Seven 
Gables,"  272,  273;  in  Salem, 
269-270,  273,  274;  "Scarlet 
Letter,"  271;  original  of 
Hester  Prynne,  111;  visited 
by  Worcester,  270. 

Holmes:  birthplace  of,  229; 
homes  of,  41,  49,  57,  58,  59, 
60,  61,  191;  grave  of,  224;  the 
"Long  Path,"  11;  the  "Auto- 
crat," 59;  "Old  Ironsides," 
179;  his  importance  to  Bos- 
ton, 55;  at  King's  Chapel, 
115;  teacher  of  anatomy, 
55-57;  "boring"  through  nar- 
row streets,  150;  poems  about 
lectures,  198;  wit  of,  57,  100, 
104. 

Hooper,   "King,"  home   of,   264. 

Houdon;  his  Washington,  102. 

"House  of  the  Seven  Gables," 
272,  273. 

Howe,  Julia  Ward:  home  of,  50; 
meeting  with  Henry  James,  50. 

Howells:  his  estimate  of  Bos- 
ton, 321;  feelings,  approach- 
ing Boston,  319;  home  of,  47. 

Huntington  Avenue,  200. 


"Ichabod,"  250. 
India  Wharf,  140-141. 
Ironwork,  Old,  33,  37,  52,  59,  67. 
Italians  in  Boston,  163,  164,  168, 
172. 

J 

James,  Henry:  the  Back  Bay, 
192;  Julia  Ward  Howe,  50; 
Mount  Vernon  Street,  23. 

Julien,  and  his  soup,  11. 


INDEX 


Keayne,  Robert,  111,  137,  138. 

King  Philip,  306. 

King's  Chapel,  112-115. 

King's  Chapel  Burying-Ground, 
110-111,  115. 

Knox,  General:  bookshop  of,  126, 
212;  getting  cannon  for  Dor- 
chester Heights,  212-217;  his 
cannon  in  Cambridge,  228; 
meeting  Andr6,  214;  portrait 
of,  221. 


Lafayette:  at  Bunker  Hill  cele- 
bration, 184;  greeting  Han- 
cock's widow,  74. 

Lectures,  in  Boston,  197-198, 
206. 

Lee  mansion,  262-264. 

Lexington,  285,  287-289. 

Lexington  and  Concord,  road  be- 
tween, 285,  289,  290. 

Libraries:  Athenseum,  101-103; 
Boston  Public,  200-202; 
Emerson's,  296;  Widener  Me- 
morial, 232-234;  Washing- 
ton's, 102. 

Lind,  Jenny,  25,  253. 

"Little  Women,"  297. 

"Long  Path,"  the,  11. 

Longfellow:  home  of,  226;  grave 
of,  224;  with  Browning,  226; 
"Reef  of  Norman's  Woe,"  256; 
the  Wayside  Inn  and  its  char- 
acters, 47,  48,  255,  256. 

Louisburg  Square,  24-26,  33,  47, 
63,  322. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  102,  224, 
225. 

Lowell  Lectures,  198. 

M 

Mall,  Beacon  Street,  16. 
Marblehead,  262-268. 
Marshfield,  250. 
Massachusetts  Hall,  232. 


330 


Mayflower,  the:  babies  of  the 
309;  grave  of  first  woman 
who  landed  from,  110;  "Log" 
of,  119. 

Medford,  257,  260. 

Memorial  Hall,  234-236. 

Monuments:  Banks  and  Devens, 
101;  Boston  Massacre,  13; 
Phillips  Brooks,  99;  Bunker 
Hill,  183,  186;  Channing,  99; 
Dorchester  Heights,  220 ; 
Ether,  100;  Glover,  189;  Hale, 
99;  Hamilton,  189;  John 
Harvard,  231;  Hooker,  100; 
Lexington,  288 ;  Louisburg 
Square,  25;  Prescott,  186; 
Provincetown,  317;  Shaw,  13; 
Soldiers  and  Sailors',  14; 
Standish,  309 ;  Washington, 
189. 

Moth,  the  gypsy,  225. 

Motley,  50,  224. 

Mt.  Auburn  Cemetery,  224. 

Mt.  Vernon  Street,  23,  24,  32, 
54,  322. 

Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  203,  204; 
Stuart  portraits  in,  221. 

Music,  in  Boston,  198-200. 

Musicians,  street,  33. 


N 


Navy   Yard,    Charlestown,    177- 

180. 
North  Church,  Old,  164-170. 
North  Square;  172. 


Old     Granary     Burying-Ground, 

102-106. 
"Old  Ironsides,"  176,  178,  179. 
Old  Manse,  295. 
Old  North  Church,  164-170. 
Old  South  Church,  115-121. 


Parkman,  51,  224. 

Park  Street  Church,  10S-108. 


INDEX 


Parkways,   160-162. 

Parsons,  Thomas,  48. 

Percy,  Lord:  at  Dorchester,  218; 

at   Lexington,   285,    286,   292, 

293;  portrait  of,  293. 
Pickering,     Timothy,     home    of, 

278. 
Pigeons,  on  the  Common,  16. 
Pinckney  Street,  32,  44,  45,  46, 

322 
Pitcairn,   Major,    104,   166,   287, 

288    290 
Plymouth,    300-311;    Emerson's 

wedding  trip  from,  296. 
Plymouth  Rock,  302. 
Poe:  birthplace  of,  321;  attitude 

of    Boston    toward,    320;    his 

estimate  of  Boston,  321. 
Portuguese      at      Provincetown, 

316. 
Post-Office,  148. 
Prescott,  General,  monument  to, 

186. 
Prescott,  the  historian,  home  of, 

37. 
Priscilla   and   John   Alden,   307, 

308,  311-313. 
Provincetown,  313-318. 
Putnam  homestead,  283,  284. 


Quincy  homestead,  248-250. 
Quiney  Market,  137. 
Quincy,  town  of,  245,  248. 


Radcliffe  College,  223. 

"Reef  of  Norman's  Woe,"  256. 

Restaurants,  86,  157. 

Revere  Beach,  161. 

Revere,  Paul:  character  and 
achievements,  172-176;  copper 
for  State  House,  66;  as  a  den- 
tist, 174;  home  of,  172;  grave 
of,  103;  his  lanterns,  169,  170; 
at  Lexington,  287;  his  prints, 
131;  his  midnight  ride,  169- 
170;  his  silversmithing,  131, 
173,  204. 


Riedesel,  Baroness,  21,  266. 
Royall  house,  257-260. 


S 


Salem,  269-284. 

Salem  Street,  163,  168. 

"Scarlet  Letter,"  111,  271,  272, 
273. 

Shaw  Memorial,  13. 

Silver,  Old:  at  Museum  of  Fine 
Arts,  204;  of  the  Old  North 
Church,  167;  made  by  Paul 
Revere,  131,  173,  204. 

Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  298. 

Social  life  in  Boston;  opinion  of 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  236. 

Somerset,  the:  at  Boston,  169; 
guns  from,  175;  existent  wreck 
of,  313. 

Spinning  Maidens,  17. 

Standish,  Miles,  309-311;  hasty 
courtship  of,  308;  his  sword, 
309;  site  of  home,  310. 

Stark,  "Molly,"  259,  260. 

State  House,  New,  9,  20,  62; 
Bulfinch  front,  66;  interior, 
67-72. 

State  House,  Old,  126-132. 

Steepness  of  Beacon  Hill,  20,  22. 

Street  cries,  old,  151,  152. 

Street  signs,  154,  155. 

Streets:  names,  in  Back  Bay, 
192;  complexity  and  narrow- 
ness of,  149,  150;  names 
changed,  122,  124;  pavements 
of,  150,  151. 

Stuart,  Gilbert:  home  of,  144; 
grave  of,  12,  13;  Chester 
Harding,  101;  his  portraits  on 
Beacon  Hill,  53,  of  Knox,  221, 
of  Washington,  12,  135,  137. 

Students'  Quarter,  204,  205. 

Sunday  laws,  82,  84. 

Sunday  observance,  85,  87. 

Surriage,  Agnes,  114. 


331 


Tablets:  Boston  Tea  Party,  139; 


INDEX 


British  retreat,  293;  British 
soldiers,  294;  Channing,  43; 
Hancock,  76,  79;  Holmes,  55; 
Lexington,  288;  Old  North 
Church,  169;  Old  South 
Church,  115;  Pitcairn,  166; 
Plymouth,  304,  305;  Gilbert 
Stuart,  13. 

Thackeray:  sailing  for  Boston, 
319;  with  "Esmond"  on  Bea- 
con Hill,  37;  eating  American 
oysters,  36;  going  to  lecture, 
35;  inspiration  for  "Virgin- 
ians," 38. 

Theaters:  locations,  87,  88;  no 
Saturday  night  performances, 

87,  89;    the   Boston   Theater, 

88,  89,  90. 

Thoreau,  297,  298;  visiting  Haw- 
thorne, 296. 

Ticknor,  George,  home  of,  52. 

Trees,  on  Boston  Common,  9;  at 
Plymouth,  304,  305;  at  Salem, 
277. 

Trinity  Church,  202. 


Views:  of  the  Back  Bay,  193;  of 
Bunker  Hill  Monument,  171; 
of  the  Charles,  32;  of  the 
Granary  Burying-Ground,  105; 
of  the  State  House,  9;  from 
the  State  House,  62. 

"Virginians,  The";  Boston  in- 
spiration for,  38. 

W 

Wadsworth  house,  229. 
Wapping  Street,  177. 


Warren,  General,  114,  118,  174. 

Washington:  visit  to  Boston  in 
1756,  217;  in  1789,  122;  in 
British  farce,  185;  opinion  of 
Bunker  Hill,  182;  in  Cam- 
bridge, 227;  taking  command, 
228;  at  Dorchester  Heights, 
208-222;  relations  with  Han- 
cock, 123;  at  King's  Chapel, 
113;  his  library,  102;  at  Mar- 
blehead,  265;  married  by 
clergyman  from  Marblehead, 
268;  portraits  of,  12,  135- 
137,  235;  acquaintance  with 
Paul  Revere,  175;  first  statue 
of,  167;  Houdon's  statue,  102; 
equestrian  statue,  189. 

Washington  Street,  122,  124, 
125. 

Wayside  Inn,  47,  48,  255,  256. 

Weather,  of  Boston,  158,  159; 
winter  observances,  153. 

Webster:  Bunker  Hill  oration, 
183;  Jenny  Lind  concert,  253; 
"Ichabod,"  250;  home  of,  250, 
251;  death  of,  252;  grave  of, 
252. 

Wellesley  College,  161. 

West  Cedar  Street,  47. 

Weston,  beautiful  road  to,  160. 

Wharves,   140-144. 

Whittier:  "Ichabod,"  250;  "Skip- 
per Ireson's  Ride,"  266. 

Widener  Memorial  Library,  232- 
234. 

Winstanley,  135-137. 

Women,  importance  of,  in  Bos- 
ton, 90-92 ;  in  telephone  direc- 
tory, 96. 

Women's  City  Club,  93. 

Wyman  of  Woburn,  286. 


332 


M94347 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


